Greetings from the Reverse Universe
by That's Professor Hawke
Summary: In the aftermath of Pain's attack, as Danzo moves to claim the seat of the Hokage and Sasuke Uchiha is officially branded a renegade shinobi, a space-time technique gone awry brings two Naruto Uzumakis, and two Sasuke Uchihas, together...
1. I: The Day Fate Got Its Wires Crossed

**Author's Note:** This story is not a canonical part of _The Possibilities of Time,_ but rather, something that is being written on a whim in the aftermath of my recent _Sonic Generations_ craze. As such, the portrayal of that alternate timeline's Team Seven may not sync up with the portrayal of them when they actually reach that point in the series. Consider this portrayal a rough sketch of what I envision them to be by the time the Pain arc ends, and this story an alternate universe within my alternate universe.

And for those unfamiliar with the _Naruto Shippuden _movies, the references to the renegade puppeteer Mukade and the ruined city of Roran are referring to the events of the fourth _Shippuden _movie, which involves time travel.

Readers that haven't been acquainted with _The Possibilities of Time _(which begins with _The Whims of Fate_) are advised read that first, as this story involves the characters from that story.

**Disclaimer:** _Naruto_ is a _Shonen Jump _publication written by Masashi Kishimoto. I am neither _Shonen Jump_ nor Masashi Kishimoto. If that doesn't say it all, I pity you for your lack of perceptive prowess, and strongly advise that you _not _pursue the way of the ninja.

**~V~**

**Greetings from the Reverse Universe  
><strong>- a_ Possibilities of Time_ 'what-if' side-story -  
>by<br>That's Professor Hawke

**~V~**

**- Chapter One -  
>"The Day Fate Got Its Wires Crossed"<strong>

**~V~**

It had been well over three days since Team Seven—consisting of three sixteen-year-olds, two men and one woman—had set out from the ruined city of Roran to return to their home village of _Konohagakure no Sato._ The apprehensive, dismal mood had not lifted in the time since.

They were speeding through the forest now, as the morning sun reached the ten-o'-clock mark, leaping from tree to tree. Their search for Kakashi-sensei in the aftermath of the incident at Roran had been in vain, so they could only hope the man had returned to the village... rather than blinking out of existence, as it appeared he had.

Things had gone to hell in a literal flash. The mission had seemed simple enough, especially for Team Kakashi, which consisted of three Jonin and one Chunin. Their mark had been a rogue puppetmaster that the Hidden Leaf had agreed to hunt down as a favor to their ally, the Village Hidden in the Sand. The battle had seemed to be going in Team Kakashi's favor; Naruto hadn't even needed the Flying Thunder God Technique, nor Sasuke his Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan. But then Mukade, the sly bastard, had taken advantage of their lapse in attention and a conveniently-timed sandstorm to slip further into the ruins, and...

Well, within that particular ruin was the renegade puppeteer's goal: a natural source of limitless chakra that had once been sealed away by Naruto's father, the Fourth Hokage himself. As if the story behind the seal needed proving, it happened to be bound with one of Minato Namikaze's old Flying Thunder God kunai knives. Sensing that he'd been backed into a corner, Mukade had extracted this kunai and attempted to absorb the seal itself.

Naruto had thrown one of his own kunai and dealt a killing blow to the puppeteer via his _own _teleportation marker, but the damage had apparently been done already. A massive, pulsating light exploded from the center, and both of Naruto's friends had rushed forward in a panic... evidently forgetting that Naruto could teleport right back to either of them at a moment's notice. In order to rescue his comrades from that mysterious explosion of light, Naruto had grasped both of their hands and attempted to use the Flying Thunder God Technique _again _to warp them all out of harm's way, but...

...but all three had been rendered unconscious, and when they awoke, Kakashi was nowhere to be seen and the seal was again very much intact, as if the incident had never occurred. The only signs that anything out of the ordinary had occurred were their memories of the event and Naruto's splitting headache—which he was sure had been caused by the strain of using _Hiraishin_ at the moment he had. The three had searched for their sensei for hours, but found no sign of him, nor even a trace of his scent.

More disturbing to Naruto in particular: he could no longer detect any of his _Hiraishin_ markers apart from the kunai he carried on his person, and the ones he'd placed on Hinata's curse seal and the inside of Sasuke's _hitai-ate_. He couldn't find the one on the kunai knife he'd given Kakashi, nor the one he'd placed on Fu, nor the ones on Gaara, Bee, Yugito, or Utakata, nor could he detect the ones inside his apartment back in Konoha or the one he'd given to the Third Hokage when he'd succeeded in mastering his father's space-time techniques.

Their only recourse had been to return to Konoha and file their report. Naruto only hoped that Kakashi hadn't been engulfed by that weird light—

Suddenly, the trees came to an abrupt end. The three all landed on the same thick branch, standing mere inches away from each other—by this point even Hinata was comfortable with such proximity—and surveyed the aftermath of what might have been the end of the world.

Before them stood a crater. Behind that crater was the Hidden Leaf Village... or rather, what was left of it: a village-sized pile of rubble.

**~V~**

Sasuke Uchiha, clad in black pants and a blue shirt with the Uchiha clan crest emblazoned on the back, felt an unearthly chill sweep his entire body at the sight, and reflexively rested his hand on the hilt of the chokuto on his belt—the chakra-reactive blade he'd been given by Naruto three years earlier.

The _hitai-ate _bearing the emblem of the Leaf was still very much on his forehead, by the by.

The red-haired boy with the whisker marks on his face surveyed the scene with a grim expression, the wind whipping at the sides of his black-and-red vest and creating subtle ripples in the fabric of his dark-green jeans. Hinata, shivered a little—but this had nothing to do with the lack of the hooded jacket she'd worn every day when she was younger.

"Akatsuki...?" Hinata suggested quietly.

"Would Akatsuki be capable of this?" Sasuke asked, turning to Naruto.

"Nagato _might_ be..." Naruto said slowly, "but he's not a problem anymore. And I doubt even Akatsuki would be bold enough to do something like this whether they could or couldn't pull it off. An attack of this magnitude might be enough to unite all five nations against them. Hina-chan, can you scope out the situation for us?"

"You don't even need to ask, Naruto-kun," said the girl, the only one of the three who hadn't yet made the rank of Jonin, and as the veins flared at her temples—signalling the activation of her Byakugan eyes—Naruto smiled a little at the subtle confidence in her gentle voice.

"It looks like whoever or whatever caused this is long gone," Hinata said after several minutes. "People are milling about, trying to rebuild or recover valuables from the wreckage. I can see carpenters at work on the east side of the village, standard patrols... in fact," she added with a hopeful, yet puzzled, look at the red-haired Jonin, "I see so many survivors in town that I can't help but wonder if there were any casualties at all."

"If there's no immediate danger, then the obvious answer is to report to Sarutobi-sensei," Naruto reasoned. "We'll file our report on Roran and find out what happened all at the same time."

Sasuke's eyes narrowed slowly as they slid from left to right over the ruined village. While Hinata had been scanning the city with her Byakugan, he had done so with his Sharingan... and this was no illusion. The Hidden Leaf Village had really... seriously... been destroyed.

Sasuke gritted his teeth as he grunted an affirmative to their _de facto_ leader's decision.

He didn't know the who, how, or why behind any of this just yet... but when he found the ones responsible for this attack, he would obliterate them so utterly and completely with his Mangekyo Sharingan's _Amaterasu_ that not even ashes would remain.

**~V~**

"...Weird," muttered Naruto, eyes sliding from villager to villager as they walked down the main street toward what was left of the Hokage Tower, where they would, at least, be able to find out where the Hokage happened to be at the moment.

"What's weird?" Hinata asked.

"They're not staring."

Sasuke and Hinata, who'd been too focused on their destination and the destruction around them up to that point, needed a moment to process what Naruto had just said... and then they saw it, too. The villagers, who once had given Naruto so many cold looks, looks which had eventually changed to good-natured recognition and eventually admiration as the years had gone by, had never so completely failed to notice the future Hokage's presence before. If the village hadn't been in such a state, Naruto may have considered this a relief... the abundance of attention he'd received in the months after Sarutobi had publicly declared Naruto to be his chosen successor had been more irksome than he cared to admit.

Now, however, they were neither giving him cold glares nor idolizing him nor acknowledging him at all. They were simply going about their business without noticing him. And even when he'd met the eyes of one or two, there'd been no flicker or recognition to speak of.

"With the village in this state, you'd think they'd be overjoyed at the return of the Hokage's successor," murmured Sasuke. "I don't like this."

"'I don't like this?'" Naruto echoed dryly. "Sasuke, that's right up there with 'What could possibly go wrong?' Saying shit like that is like walking under a ladder, man, don't jinx us!"

And no sooner had the words left his mouth than Naruto's eyes flicked to the upper left. On pure instinct, his whipped out one of his three remaining _Hiraishin _kunai and flicked it directly upward into the sky. Grasping Hinata's left hand and laying his left palm on Sasuke's shoulder in the next instant, he reached out his mind and the three of them blinked out of sight in a crimson flash... just in time to avoid a hail of kunai knives directed at the place where Sasuke had just been.

**~V~**

The man in the monkey-mask crouched on the rooftop of the weapons shop, a younger member of the ANBU Black Ops, swore under his breath. Looking around frantically, he felt his left hand shoot up to press the call button on his radio. It had been a foolish, impulsive attack. He should have radioed in and tailed the renegade from a distance until backup arrived, instead of trying to be a hotshot—

"This is Babboon! All operatives on high alert! S-class rogue ninja Sasuke Uchiha sighted on Konoha's main street! Repeat, _Sasuke Uchiha sighted on main street. _I've lost sight of—"

Babboon gasped into his mouthpiece.

"Above me—!"

Babboon whipped out a kunai to deflect the oddly-shaped knife the airborne boy with the fiery-red hair flung down at him... but in the instant before his blade made contact with the enemy's, the red-haired boy was _there_, had caught the oddly-shaped blade in his left hand... and had launched a brutal punch into Babboon's gut with his right.

"Uuuurrrrggggh..."

The newly-minted ANBU operative felt consciousness leave him. It was a blow to his pride that he'd be nursing for months to come.

**~V~**

As the man in the babboon mask collapsed onto the rooftop in a heap, Naruto spun around and dropped his kunai unceremoniously onto the rooftop. In the next eyeblink he was next to his airborne friends, and then in the one after that they had all materialized in one final crimson flash on the rooftop behind the unconscious ANBU operative.

Letting out a long, irritated breath, Naruto bent down to retrieve his kunai.

"What the _fuck," _Naruto said, "did you _do, _Sasuke? S-class renegade? Really?"

"Hell if I know what this clown's talking about," Sasuke grunted. "Maybe this is someone's lame idea of a joke."

Hinata activated her Byakugan, scanning the area for further threats—

"Uh... guys?"

"Yeah, Hina-chan?" Naruto said cheerily.

"I think that 'clown' really _is_ ANBU," she said grimly.

"What makes you say so?" Sasuke asked.

"Because from the look of it, every member of Black Ops in the village is descending on our current location. We need to move. _Now._"

Naruto blinked, stared blankly at Sasuke, and said in a nervous monotone, "Sasuke... what did you _do?_"

"Hell if I know!" Sasuke growled again.

As one, all three members of Team Seven leapt off across the rooftops. So skilled were they in the ways of stealth that they had returned to ground level and lost themselves in the crowds before ANBU even had a chance to see where they'd gone.

**~V~**

Karui was panting in exhaustion by now, and Naruto was bruised and beaten all over. Behind the dark-skinned Kumo kunoichi, Omoi watched with a furrowed brow. The beating had been going on for some time now, but the blonde-haired Leaf ninja showed no sign of giving in.

As the recipient of this brutal punishment pushed himself back to his feet, leaning against the wall of the shack for support, Karui shouted into his face:

"I'm telling you, no matter how many times I hit you, it won't make a difference! I'll keep this up until you tell me about Sasuke!"

Karui lunged again—and suddenly another Leaf ninja was there, one with black hair and a stunningly androgenous body, clad in a bellyshirt, even. Sai's expression was harsh and stern as he caught the woman's fist with his left hand.

"Mind your own business," Karui snarled. "This is what he wants."

Sai showed no signs of backing down.

"...Sai..." the blond-haired boy groaned. "Stay... out of this."

But Sai had seen enough.

"Naruto," he said harshly. "There's no point in getting beaten up for Sasuke's sake."

"Shut up," grunted the blond-haired boy called Naruto. "It's... my decision..."

Sai said nothing for a moment, simply staring Karui down, her fist still clutched in his vise-like grip.

"Sasuke," he said at last, "has done nothing but hurt you. If it were me..."

"Fine! If you want to butt in, I'll just hit _you, _too!" growled Karui, and she swung her other fist—

—which was caught, not by Sai or even by Naruto, but by Omoi, her own comrade.

"Give it a rest, Karui," he said. "Beating these two up won't get us anywhere—you can see that too by now, can't you?"

Turning one last, enraged look on the blonde boy and his protector, Karui wrenched her fist from Sai's grip and turned around with a furious huff.

"They promised they'd help us find Killer Bee," Omoi said, as if that were enough.

"What, you're not doubting their promise? _You?_" Karui snapped at her companion, who was typically the pessimist of the team.

Omoi spared a glance at the blonde boy and the androgenous Leaf ninja as the latter moved to support the former, and said, "Even after all that, he wouldn't sell out his friend."

He gave Karui an almost apologetic look and added, "He may be the enemy, but I like him. A man shouldn't be hasty with his words. No matter what you do, he's not going to sell out Sasuke—he's not the type to go back on his word."

Karui sighed, allowing a pinch of grudging admiration to seep through as she acknowledged Omoi's point—

"Omoi! Karui! We need to move, _now!_"

Four heads—two Cloud ninja and two Leaf ninja—snapped around in unison to regard the extremely busty female sprinting toward them. Karui and Omoi both sprang to attention as their captain, Samui, closed the distance between them.

"It's Uchiha!" Samui called. "He's been sighted in the village! This is our chance to capture him and find out what he's done to Bee-sensei!"

Sai's eyes shot wide and the blonde-haired "Naruto" gasped.

"What?" exclaimed the blonde. "Sasuke is... here? In Konoha?"

Samui began to respond: "Yes—"

But Karui cut her off by turning to the blonde and snarling, "Don't even _think_ of butting in. Omoi, let's go!"

"Right!" the male member of the Kumo team said, and the two of them leapt off over the roof of the shack after their captain.

"Sasuke... is..." whispered the blonde-haired boy, "in the village...? Has he finally come back, or...?"

_Or is what they said true? _pondered Sai. _If Sasuke really has joined Akatsuki, then his reason for returning to Konoha would be..._

Sai felt the weight of his companion extricate itself forcibly from his shoulder. Naruto, gritting his teeth against the pain of his bruises, sprang into the air after the three ninja from the Village Hidden in the Clouds. Sai, expression grim, set out after them a few seconds later.

**~V~**

"Okay, this situation is unnerving as hell and more than a little fucked-up," Naruto said brightly as he paced back and forth in what was left of the old training spot they'd shared in their Academy days... where the trees had apparently been blown right on off their trunks by some massive blast of... of... well, _something_, and it had to have been apocalyptic! "First of all, what is wrong with this picture?"

"The city's been destroyed," Sasuke deadpanned.

"Besides that," Naruto said dismissively.

"Sasuke is apparently a renegade ninja now?" Hinata put in helpfully.

"Besides that."

"Nobody in the village recognized you..." added Sasuke. Naruto heaved a sigh.

"Alright, I was too fixated on the village itself to really register this until we had our little run-in with monkey-mask back there, so I'll cut you two a break for not noticing it. But I'm _literally_ asking you—"

Naruto jabbed a finger into the air, pointing directly at the collosal Hokage Monument towering overhead.

"—_what is wrong with this picture?"_

And his two companions finally got it, both internally smacking themselves on the forehead for not noticing the fifth face on the mountainside sooner.

The face that looked exactly like—

"Tsunade-sama... the Fifth Hokage?" Hinata mumbled skeptically.

"I ask you," Naruto said quietly. "How long do you think it'd take a sculptor to add a whole 'nother face to a monument that massive?"

"A lot longer than a week," Sasuke said. "What the hell is going on...?"

"I have a feeling I'm close to an answer," muttered Naruto. "But I need more info to be sure."

"What have you got so far?" Sasuke asked.

"Well, this whole mess started when I tried to use _Hiraishin no Jutsu_ to escape that weird light back at Roran, right?"

"Yes..." Hinata answered.

"And the Flying Thunder God Technique is fundamentally a space-time teleportation jutsu..."

"What are you saying...?" Sasuke said, sounding like he didn't want to know the answer.

"It's unlikely that so much shit went down behind our backs during the course of an _eight-day mission_, isn't it?" Naruto said. "So I can only conclude that... well..."

"Well?" Hinata prompted timidly, fidgeting with her fingers like she had all the time when she was younger.

"Well, think about it," said Naruto uneasily. "After it happened, I lost my connection with every _Hiraishin_ marker I'd left behind, Kakashi-sensei was gone without a trace, there was no sign that anything had even happened at Roran at all. When we got back here, we found the whole village destroyed and a whole 'nother great stone face added to the monument. All of this after a mishap involving _space-time ninjutsu. _In other words..."

"You're not seriously suggesting we accidentally travelled through _time_?" Sasuke exclaimed incredulously.

"Well, if you have a better idea, I'm all ears," Naruto replied with a shrug. "When I was working with Genma-senpai to master the technique, though, time-travel theory _did _come up."

"Um... we need to move..."

Hinata, who had been surveying their surroundings with her Byakugan throughout the conversation, turned her head to the right, looking out at some distant, oncoming threat. Naruto and Sasuke both nodded without a word, and the three set off again, heading to the west through the destroyed forest.

Thus did two fates set off on a head-on collision course... and from that moment on, two histories, two timelines, and two sixteen-year-old shinobi sharing the same name and the same burden found themselves irreversably and inexorably bound to one another.

In short: that was the day that Fate got its wires crossed.


	2. II: Greetings from the Reverse Universe

**Disclaimer:** _Naruto_ is a _Shonen Jump _publication written by Masashi Kishimoto. I am neither _Shonen Jump_ nor Masashi Kishimoto. If that doesn't say it all, I pity you for your lack of perceptive prowess, and strongly advise that you _not _pursue the way of the ninja.

**~V~**

**- Chapter Two -  
>"Greetings from the Reverse Universe"<strong>

**~V~**

At that moment, the heiress apparent of the Hyuga Clan's Main Branch—a sixteen-year-old girl with long, indigo hair, clad in a hooded, lavender jacket that obscured her figure—was taking a walk, and thinking. She'd left the little makeshift village of tents behind some time ago, and was now walking through the woods. Where, exactly, she wasn't sure, but one of the perks of inheriting the Byukagan was that one rarely needed to worry about getting lost.

Time had passed in a blur since the attack, which had only been a couple of days ago—it seemed to her that no time had passed at all. Reconstruction was underway, both by traditional means and flashier ones (Captain Yamato's Wood-Element techniques would certainly save the village some time). Despite the destruction of the village, the people were in high spirits... a fact which this girl unhesitatingly credited to a certain blonde-haired teenager, who had almost single-handedly saved the village, even managing to convince the man who'd caused so much death and destruction to turn around and bring everyone he'd killed right on back to life.

_Naruto-kun..._

They hadn't spoken face-to-face since the attack... there had simply been too much going on, the heiress herself being one of the ninja tasked with searching the wreckage for objects of importance. She supposed it was a blessing that Pain had caused such an uproar prior to using... _whatever_ he'd used to level the village, since the majority of the civilians had been safely out of harm's way and, more importantly, outdoors at the time. One of the first rather creepy images her mind had conjured upon commencing these duties was what might have happened if Pain had brought the villagers back to life beneath the wreckage of their own collapsed homes... and the thought had made her feel more than a little queasy when she'd considered it.

The heiress couldn't help but wonder why she'd been able to pour out her heart so easily when standing between Pain and Naruto, and yet still couldn't quite work up the nerve to seek him out and just talk to him about what she'd confessed. She supposed part of her was waiting for Naruto to come to her himself with a reply. Was it too soon to confront the matter directly? Perhaps he was still trying to work out an answer, himself.

She had intended to speak with him today, but before she could even get to the point where she'd have to face down her own nerves, the news had come.

A man named Danzo Shimura had been selected to serve as the new Hokage, and Sasuke Uchiha was now officially a renegade ninja with no future.

Bringing up matters of romance _now_ would be just plain tactless, at _best._

_When Naruto-kun finds out, he'll..._

The heiress sighed. What would Naruto's reaction be? Knowing him, his first instinct would probably be to storm right into the Hokage's tent and demand that he change his mind. She didn't know enough about this Danzo to predict how much trouble that would cause—

The girl's thoughts were interrupted as a disturbance at the edge of her awareness snapped her back to reality. Someone was coming, travelling through the trees not far to her right. From the sound of it, they weren't even bothering with stealth. It was probably another ninja from the village, but after Akatsuki's recent attack, it would be stupid not to check it out.

Withdrawing behind a tree to the side of the forest path, the heiress activated her Byakugan and peered through the trees. Once she adjusted her focus enough to see the three shinobi, she gasped.

_Sasuke is... right there!_

No. No way. Why here? Why now? What—

_...Me?_

One of the two travelling with him was a girl who looked almost exactly like the heiress herself, only clad in drastically different clothing. This girl's Leaf headband was tied around her forehead, whereas the heiress kept hers around her neck like a necklace or collar of sorts. This lookalike also wore clothing that was less reserved: the same basic style as the heiress, sans the hooded jacket. Her hair was also cut shorter, reminiscent of the hairstyle the heiress had worn in her Academy days, prior to Naruto's departure from the village with Jiraiya of the Sannin...

There was a third figure with them, a red-haired boy of perhaps sixteen, who also wore a Leaf headband. The heiress didn't recognize him, and didn't think to give him more than a passing glance.

The trio of ninja were approaching, travelling almost parallel to the road, and would have passed right by the heiress... had she not spontaneously leapt into motion, running straight up the side of the tree to swing deftly onto a branch, jumping from one to another and then to another, coming to a stop directly in their path.

Even as she did this—her body moving almost on its own—that rational part of her mind asked the irrational side just what it was she planned to do. The irrational side had no answer—all it knew was that Sasuke Uchiha, the primary source of her love's frustrations for the past three years, was _right there_ and she was going to _do something about it._

When the three shinobi from an alternate reality came into view of her, they all stopped as one, regarding her with expressions of caution and confusion.

**~V~**

The girl with long, indigo hair vaulted into view out of nowhere—even Hinata, who'd been forced to deactivate her Byakugan for a while in order to avoid straining her eyes, hadn't had any warning that she was approaching. The sight of the girl stunned all three momentarily: Naruto came to a halt next to Hinata, and Sasuke, further to the right, landed on the branch of a different tree.

Veins instantly flared in Hinata's temples.

"You have the Byakugan?" asked the long-haired lookalike with the seal-free forehead, holding her arms up in a familiar, slightly altered Gentle Fist stance. "And if that's a disguise, I can't see it. Who are you?"

"She's... not disguised, either," said Hinata. She deactivated her Byakugan again, regarding the girl with normal vision. "Sasuke?"

Her Byakugan focused on all three potential opponents, the heiress noted the subtle shift in Sasuke's chakra as he activated his own _dojutsu_.

"There's no ninjutsu or genjutsu at work here," said the Uchiha. The heiress got the weird impression that Sasuke sounded somehow, subtly... friendlier... than he ever had in the past, even before he'd left to join Orochimaru. "Her Byakugan is the genuine article, alright."

"Who... are you?" Hinata asked.

"I asked you first," said the heiress icily—or about as icily as Naruto had ever heard Hinata's voice say anything, which in truth wasn't that icy at all.

"Fair enough," the red-haired boy said—amicably, but still warily. "My name's Naruto Uzumaki. This is Hinata, and the emo with the duck's-ass haircut is Sasuke. Now can you by any chance explain why you're the spitting image of my girlfriend, miss...?"

"You expect me to believe that _you _are Naruto-kun?" the heiress said in a low, dangerous voice. "Or that _she _is _me?"_

Hinata's eyes widened in puzzlement, Sasuke's left eyebrow twitched in a slight betrayal of surprise, and the red-haired Jinchuriki they both knew as a friend and a leader quirked his head to one side and said, "You're Hinata Hyuga, you say? Nice try, but you forgot the curse-seal... and the fact that she covers her forehead with her headband... and that she quit with the adorably modest hooded-sweatjacket look about three years ago. Points for bringing that back, though, I have a lot of fond memories from back then. Most of which involve her blushing like a roseberry bush and/or passing out."

The Hinata who was definitely _not _the heiress apparent of the Main Branch groaned and then whined, "Naruto-kun, be serious!"

The Hinata who definitely _was _the heiress of the Main Branch blushed a bit, but settled a little more firmly into her taijutsu stance.

"You may be able to fool the Byakugan," the girl in the hooded jacket said evenly, "but that's as far as you'll get. Sasuke-san... if you are indeed the real Sasuke Uchiha, which I'm beginning to doubt..."

The raven-haired Uchiha frowned a bit.

"...you should know," the girl said in a slightly more gentle voice, "that the new Hokage has given permission to have you disposed of as a _nuke-nin_."

"Yeah, so we've heard," the red-haired boy said. "Could you by any chance tell us what Bird-Brain over here allegedly did to wind up an S-class rogue?"

"I wasn't speaking to you," the heiress said harshly. "Sasuke," she added, again in that gentler tone. "Naruto-kun still hasn't given up on you... and even now, it's not too late... so please, turn yourself in before this situation spins even further out of control. If you give in peacefully, perhaps we... we're still your friends, Sasuke-san, we're still your comrades! We can appeal to the Hokage on your behalf—"

"What are you talking about?" Sasuke said incredulously. "Naruto is _right here_. And why should I turn myself in? Just tell me, why is the village out for my blood all of a sudden?"

The heiress's expression flickered between puzzlement and determination as her mind considered the possibilities behind the Uchiha's ignorance. Was he pretending? Was he really an impostor and therefore genuinely oblivious to the situation? Was this red-haired boy, who claimed to be Naruto-kun, manipulating him somehow? She couldn't see any evidence of genjutsu with her Byakugan...

"Hey, um... Hinata?" the red-haired boy asked slowly. "Can you... answer a question?"

The heiress turned a cold glare on the red-haired boy, but at the same time the girl next to him said, "Yes, Naruto-kun?"

"Uh... fuck, this is confusing..." muttered the red-haired Naruto. "Not you, Hina-chan... I was talking to her."

"Huh? Oh," his girlfriend said, and then thought. _He's right, that _is_ confusing..._

"You're not a member of the Cadet Branch, like... er... _our_ Hinata is, right?" Naruto said carefully.

The heiress frowned.

"Please, humor me? Hinata?" the red-haired boy said, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. "Y'see... the reason we're even here right now... well, it's complicated, but... listen, I'm not one hundred percent on what's going on here. I'm close to an answer, but I don't quite have all the context I need to be sure yet. Can you just humor me, answer my questions?"

"...I suppose," the heiress said. Naruto winced. It was so... _unnerving _to hear his girlfriend's voice address him in such an unfamiliar, untrusting way.

"So, you're... the heiress of the Main Branch, am I right?" asked Naruto. His girlfriend snapped her head to the right—

"What?" she asked, her tone one of such genuine surprise that it gave even her lookalike pause.

"...Yes," the heiress said. "I am the firstborn daughter of Hiashi Hyuga, head of the Hyuga Clan's Main Household."

Naruto scratched at his whisker-marks. "And Sasuke... why is he classified as a rogue ninja? Answer as if the three of us know absolutely nothing about him, if you don't mind."

The heiress had no idea what to make of the red-haired charlatan's questions now. The girl at his side was looking back and forth between "Naruto" and the heiress herself with an incredulous expression on her face.

"Three years ago," the heiress said slowly, turning to look at the raven-haired boy, "you... that is, Sasuke-san... left the village in pursuit of power, defecting from Konoha to join Orochimaru—"

"Oh, _please_, like I'd _ever—" _Sasuke began to protest, but the red-haired boy cut him off.

"Let 'Hinata' speak," he said, in a calming-yet-commanding tone of voice. Then: "Go on."

Momentarily thrown off by "Sasuke's" indignant response, the heiress continued: "I don't actually know much else beyond that. Naruto-kun has spent the last three years trying to save y... to save Sasuke-san. The Fifth Hokage never officially declared Sasuke-san a renegade, but she was injured during Pain's attack, and her replacement—"

"Replacement?" Naruto cut in. "Someone's replaced the Fifth? Who?"

"...A man named Danzo Shimura. I know nothing about him, so don't bother asking."

Sasuke's face darkened and his lip twitched in a momentary, unconscious snarl. The girl who resembled the heiress frowned thoughtfully, and the red-haired boy let out a startled exclaimation: "What? _Danzo_? That jackass, Hokage? No, wait, back up. More importantly, Nagato... Pain, that is... actually _was _the one who destroyed the village?"

"...Pain of the Akatsuki, yes," the heiress said slowly. "You really don't know anything about what's been going on, do you?"

"No, that's what I've been trying to—" Naruto began, then stopped mid-sentence. He gave the air a few sniffs. "Hina-chan, Byakugan!"

"Right!" replied the Cadet Branch girl, and the veins flared once more at her temples. "Huh? Kakashi-sensei?"

Sasuke, Naruto, and Hinata turned their heads as one upward. Then the man whom Naruto had caught the scent of, and whom Hinata had identified, hopped out from behind a nearby tree, landing silently on a branch between the heiress and the three members of Team Seven.

"I had hoped I'd find you before the others did... Sasuke," said the masked Jonin. "But who are your companions? And why do _you_—" he added, turning an eye to regard the girl standing next to the red-haired boy, "—look exactly like Hinata?"

The girl he had addressed turned to her boyfriend with a frustrated look on her face, as if expecting him to have the answer.

"Kakashi-sensei," the red-haired boy said, "It's me... Naruto. Don't you recognize me?"

The man's one eye quirked up an eyebrow. "Recognize you? With a disguise like that? The only thing you got right are those marks on your cheeks. Here's a hint, kid... Naruto's hair color is _blonde._"

The red-haired boy blinked a few times, scratched his whisker-marks, and said: "You mean, like... the other me, the 'Naruto' from this timeline, he has... my father's hair?"

Everyone, including the red-haired boy's companions, looked at him in surprise at that pronouncement.

Sasuke was thinking: _Other "you?" What the...?_

Hinata-of-the-Main-Branch was thinking: _The Naruto from this... "timeline?"_

Hinata-of-the-Cadet-Branch was thinking: _You can't be serious, Naruto-kun! You mean, this girl who looks like me is actually... but that's... that's not..._

And Kakashi of the Sharingan was thinking: _He knows about Naruto's connection to the __Fourth Hokage..._

"Kid," said the masked Jonin. "Who are you?"

The red-haired boy sighed, straightened up, and waved a lazy hand in the universal sign of "Hello."

"Greetings from the Reverse Universe, friends and neighbors," he said in a dry monotone. "My name is Alternate Universe Naruto Uzumaki, and the three of us have been chronologically misplaced due to a collosal space-time ninjutsu fuck-up. This is my girlfriend, Alternate Universe Hinata Hyuga, and that is my best friend, Alternate Universe Sasuke Uchiha. Oh yeah, this Sasuke never defected, just so we're clear on that point. And if you believed any of that just now, you're either really quick on the uptake or supremely gullible. So, how's it hangin', Alternate Universe Kakashi-sensei? And does blonde hair look good on me? I've always been a bit curious about that."

The silence following this monologue was deafening. The red-haired boy's companions stared at him with eyes that were almost bugged out.

"Are you serious?" Sasuke almost sputtered. "Time-travel is farfetched enough, but you're telling us we're in a completely different... have you gone _insane_, Naruto?"

The red-haired boy's girlfriend looked past Kakashi, into the eyes of her Main Branch counterpart... who was looking back in incredulous disbelief.

Kakashi needed a moment to sort out exactly what this red-haired boy—who was the _exact image _of Minato Namikaze, now that he'd taken the time to notice it—had said.

"How can you expect me to believe," Kakashi said lightly, "_any _of what you just said?"

"Honestly? I don't. It sounds like a bad fantasy-adventure novel," said the red-haired boy. "But hey, it is what it is whether you believe it or not. I'm having trouble believing it myself, but it's the only thing that makes sense from where I'm standing..."

"N-Naruto-kun!" said the Hinata who stood next to the red-haired boy. "Someone's coming!"

"Who?" asked Sasuke. "More ANBU?"

"I-it looks like... Neji-sama?"

The heiress blinked at the name. _Neji-sama?_

"Fuck, this is getting out of hand..." the red-haired boy said. "Look, sensei... if circumstances were different, I would so totally turn myself in so that Inoichi-san could just, like, read my mind and prove I am who I say I am, or something. But as it stands... I trust Danzo about as far as I could throw the Hokage Monument. So..."

The red-haired "Naruto" winked at the masked Jonin as he took his girlfriend's hand in his own.

"You of all people should recognize _Hiraishin no Jutsu_, right? Sensei?"

And then, in a red flash, the boy and the girl _blinked_ over to where Sasuke stood, materializing in midair next to him—and before Kakashi could get over his shock at what he was seeing, the red-haired boy had placed his other hand on Sasuke's back and all three of them were gone.

"Hinata! Byakugan!" Kakashi barked frantically, looking left, right, up, below...

The heiress channeled more chakra into her _dojutsu_, scanning the area around them, then further, then further still—

"That way!" she exclaimed, pointing off into the forest, someplace behind where the three had just been. "The three of them are about eight kilometers back that way..."

_Eight kilometers!_ Then it really was space-time ninjutsu! And if it was _Hiraishin_, as the boy claimed, they must have left a teleportation marker behind somewhere, intending to warp back to it once they'd laid a trail in a completely different direction.

_It's a tactic Minato-sensei used several times during the war... lure enemy trackers off in one direction and then use the Flying Thunder God Technique to escape without leaving a coherent trail..._

"Did they come from that direction, Hinata?" Kakashi asked.

"Y-yes, I think they did," she said.

Kakashi frowned thoughtfully beneath his mask.

"Hinata," he said, lowering his voice a bit. "Don't say anything about this encounter to anyone just yet—especially Naruto. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," she said quietly.

Just then, both heard the sound of someone rushing through the trees to their north a little too quickly to be entirely quiet about it. Within moments, Neji Hyuga came into view, Byakugan active, panting from slight exertion and looking around the area in alarm.

"Hinata-sama, are you hurt? Where is Sasuke? Kakashi-senpai, thank you for protecting my cousin," he added, offering his fellow Jonin a slight bow of the head.

The heiress sent Kakashi a questioning glance, silently asking him if she should give Neji an answer.

"Sasuke is gone," Kakashi said quietly. "Neji, listen to me. Please don't tell anyone that Sasuke was here. Especially Naruto. There's no telling how he'd react."

"You don't even need to warn me," Neji agreed. "I trust you'll report this incident, yourself?"

"Yes," said Kakashi. _But what am I reporting here, exactly?_

The red-haired boy's flippant pronouncement that he'd come from another universe, a different "timeline," due to a "space-time ninjutsu fuck-up" was beyond farfetched, but so was some random kid just suddenly appearing out of nowhere with Sasuke in tow, and with a perfect Hinata lookalike, blithely displaying perfect mastery of the Fourth Hokage's Flying Thunder God Technique... which happened to be, by the way, _space-time ninjutsu_.

_I can't believe I'm actually considering that the kid might be telling the truth, _Kakashi mused. _But still... _Hiraishin_... and that face, and... Kushina's hair..._

He didn't know what to believe. That was what scared him.

**~V~**

Naruto, Sasuke, and Hinata blinked back into existance next to the tree on which Naruto had laid a hand. The faint black _fuinjutsu _formula of his teleportation marker was still visible on the bark, five feet above the grass. Naruto sucked in a deep, calming breath and placed a finger on the marking, dispelling it.

"An alternate timeline, now," Hinata said weakly once the marking had faded. "And that other... that other me, you think she's really _me_, don't you?"

"This is all too crazy to be real," muttered Sasuke.

"Let's get a move on before they have a chance to catch up," Naruto said with an exasperated shake of his head. "Hinata, scan the area and make sure nobody's approaching our location. We need to make tracks. We can figure out the details when we've shaken off pursuit..."

"Suppose your crazy idea is actually right," Sasuke said evenly. "What exactly are we supposed to _do _about it?"

"I haven't the foggiest clue just yet, now less talking and more running."

"Naruto-kun..." said Hinata.

"Eh?"

"The ANBU are coming—following our trail up to this point. They're still pretty far away. And there are three others with them."

"Who?" asked Naruto.

"It looks like Killer Bee's team... Samui-san, Karui-san, and Omoi-san, that is."

"Is Bee with them?" Naruto asked, sounding hopeful.

"No... but it looks like they're being trailed by someone, too."

"So our trackers are being tracked. The irony. Who's trailing 'em?"

"A blonde-haired boy dressed in orange and black—he looks really beat-up—and..." Hinata frowned, "some guy in a shirt that looks like it was made for a girl. I don't recognize either of them."

Naruto scratched his whisker-marks, looking thoughtfully in the direction of their pursuers. The words of this alternate timeline's version of Kakashi Hatake occurred to him:

_Here's a hint, kid... Naruto's hair color is _blonde_._

"I think we need to stay the hell away from Blondie, unless we want this situation to turn even more awkward than it already is," Naruto said.

The red-haired boy drew one of his _Hiraishin_ kunai and lobbed it into the forest, farther away from the village. It tumbled into the dirt thirty yards away.

"Time for the ol' space-time hop-skip-escape manuever," Naruto said jovially, and his friends nodded in agreement, reaching out their hands for his.

Taking them, he reached out his mind for the marker he'd just thrown and _blink!_ They were thirty yards to the south-southwest of their previous location.

"Phew," sighed Naruto as he picked up the kunai, lobbing it further away from the trail they'd left behind... this time a little to the northwest. "It's a good thing I have as much chakra as I do, because this is getting exhausting."

"Do either of you think we're handling the pressure _really well_, considering the circumstances?" Sasuke deadpanned when they'd materialized again where the second kunai-toss had landed.

Naruto answered with a roll of his eyes and a humorless snort.

**~V~**

**Author's Note:** So first contact has been made (completely by accident) but where will events go from here? Tune in next time, kiddies. That said, I may be taking a break for a bit; _The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim _just came out. 'Nuff said.


	3. III: Making Sense of Senselessness

**Disclaimer:** _Naruto_ is a _Shonen Jump _publication written by Masashi Kishimoto. I am neither _Shonen Jump_ nor Masashi Kishimoto. If that doesn't say it all, I pity you for your lack of perceptive prowess, and strongly advise that you _not _pursue the way of the ninja.

**~V~**

**- Chapter Three -  
>"Making Sense of Senselessness"<strong>

**~V~**

Ten minutes after he set out in pursuit of the three shinobi from Kumo, the blonde-haired boy in the orange jumpsuit stopped where he stood, mentally kicked himself, and then closed his unswollen eye, remaining completely still.

_I can keep track of them easier if I just use Sage Mode! _he berated himself. Why hadn't he thought of it sooner? God, he could be so dense sometimes... ah, whatever. He decided to cut himself some slack this time. He'd only just mastered it, it'd be some time before he started using it instinctively...

"Naruto?" Sai asked in concern, coming to a landing next to him. "Are you okay?"

"Give me a minute," Naruto said calmly.

Stillness. It was something that had taken Naruto what seemed like an eternity to attain, and in retrospect—given his own hyperactive tendencies—even he had to admire his own newfound discipline at least in this respect, being able to just stop and remain completely still for even the few moments it took to draw in enough natural energy to use _senjutsu_, given how anxious he was to find Sasuke. Come of think of it, had he explained this new power of his to Sai or Sakura yet? Right, Sakura! He would be able to track her down with this too, and Kakashi-sensei, and they could try to convince Sasuke to come back to them as a team! _Why _hadn't he remembered it sooner?

The red pigmentation faded onto the skin around his closed eyelids as Sai looked on, meshing a little too well with the bumps, bruises, and blood on his face, and then the eye that wasn't swollen shut opened up—revealing a yellow iris and a black, bar-like pupil.

"I can sense chakra in Sage Mode," Naruto explained to Sai, whose expression altered slightly into one of comprehension. Naruto began to move again, locking onto the chakra signatures of Samui's team with ease, and then reaching out his mind to find each and every chakra signature in the village that he even vaguely recognized.

_Baachan's chakra is still as faint as ever, Shizune's there with her... Shikamaru, Choji, Ino, and Tenten are all together, that's odd... Hinata, she's by herself in the woods, that's right, I've been meaning to talk to her and things keep getting in the way, gotta do that later when there's time... Kiba's with his clan, so's Shino... Neji's somewhere else in the woods, on the other side of town... Hinata's with two chakra signatures I don't... I don't..._

Wait, what?

Naruto's focus shifted back to the first chakra signature he'd identified as Hinata. _Yeah, that's definitely Hinata._ After what had happened during the fight with Pain, he'd never forget anything about her, let alone her chakra signature. His focus shifted to the other one, who was also... _definitely Hinata._

Back to the first one. Then to the second. They were the same exact chakra signature!

"Clones, maybe?" he muttered to himself. "Can Hinata use the Shadow Clone Jutsu? I've never seen her use it, I'll have to ask her next time I see her."

Something about the two chakra signatures accompanying this second "Hinata" stirred something in him as well, but he couldn't quite put a finger on it. These three were traveling through the forests around the Konoha area in a seemingly random direction.

"Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Naruto said, crossing two fingers over those of his other hand in his most oft-used hand-sign, spawning two solid, flesh-and-blood duplicates of himself in the air next to him. "You two, go and find Sakura-chan and Kakashi-sensei!"

The two clones acknowledged the order ("Right!" and "Got it, boss!") and set off at top-speed in different directions, using their own Sage-senses to home in on their designated targets. Naruto himself continued in pursuit of Team Samui.

**~V~**

Sakura was almost back to the medical tents, where she figured she'd find some way to be of use to someone—it would give her something to do with her hands, at least, she needed a distraction from the jumble of thoughts clouding her skull—when a familiar obnoxious shout sounded out from the treetops at the side of the path.

"Sakura-chan! You have to come with me, quick! It's urgent!"

"Huh? Naruto? ...What happened, you're all beat up!" Sakura asked, rushing over and running up the tree to inspect his injuries.

"What? Oh, uh—never mind that now, I'm just a clone, anyway," said the Shadow Clone. "Listen, Sakura, you have to come quick—I just heard from—they're saying Sasuke was sighted in the village. I don't know if it's true or not, but those guys from Kumo are going to try and find him—"

Suddenly, Sakura was wide awake and alert. "Sasuke? In the village?" she said. "Are you sure?"

"I don't know—I'm not sure what his chakra feels like, it's been too long since I've been close enough to feel it myself, so I can't find him using Sage Mode. The best I can do is keep track of the team from Kumo and see where that gets me."

"Where are Sai and Kakashi-sensei?" asked Sakura. _Sasuke... here? Now? Has he finally...?_

"Sai's with the real me already, and I've sent a clone to find Kakashi-sensei, but he's a lot farther away than you are! Just follow me, I'll tell you what I can on the way!"

"Naruto, why are you so beat up?" Sakura asked.

"N... never mind that now, Sakura-chan," said Naruto evasively. "I was just... sparring with Sai to let off steam, that's all, and I got a little carried away. Completely my own stupid fault. Don't worry about it, I'm a fast healer."

Sakura heaved a frustrated sigh. "Idiot, you're always so reckless! Let me take a look at you when we catch up to the real one."

"Sure thing, Sakura-chan," the clone agreed. _Phew... she bought it. I don't want to have to tell her what really happened, she'd probably freak out or something._

**~V~**

It wasn't until after the encounter with the red-haired boy, the Sasuke who still wore his Leaf headband over his forehead, and the strange Hinata lookalike, that Naruto's other clone caught up to his sensei. But before that...

_Both Hinatas are in one place now—and I think I can sense Neji closing in on their location. Sensei is there, too... and those two others I can't quite put names to..._

Then the second Hinata just vanished, along with the two who'd been with her. How odd. He figured it was just a set of clones dispelling, and dismissed it.

When he caught up to the three, Neji had already joined up with Kakashi and Hinata and the three were rushing back to the command tents.

"Sensei! Hinata, Neji, I'm glad you two are here, you'll be able to help!"

"N-Naruto-kun!" Hinata stumbled slightly over the name—but not in her usual shy manner. Had Naruto been a little more perceptive than he was at that moment, he might have recognized it as a sort of hand-caught-in-the-cookie-jar tone of voice. Then: "Oh! Naruto-kun, are you alright? You're hurt! What happened?"

"Naruto, what are you doing here?" Kakashi asked somewhat warily. Then, with a raised eyebrow: "Why do you look like you've been pummeled into a pulp by a pack of ogres?"

"Actually, I'm following that team from Kumo and a bunch of others from ANBU—I think—right now. This 'me' is just a clone. But never mind that now! I heard that Sasuke was sighted in the village, sensei, and we have to hurry. If those guys from Kumo get to him first, someone could seriously get—"

"Sasuke isn't in the village," Kakashi cut in. "What the ANBU sighted was some kind of imposter, or lookalike."

"He—what?" Naruto said, taken aback.

"I believe I know what Kakashi-senpai speaks of," Neji said, speaking up for the first time. "As I was approaching Hinata-sama, I witnessed she and he speaking with three unknown shinobi. One of them resembled Sasuke, yes, but another was the exact image of Hinata-sama herself."

"It isn't really Sasuke?" the clone echoed disbelievingly—but none of the three could really tell whether he was disappointed or relieved by the revelation. "I don't—oh! That reminds me! Hinata, do you know how to make Shadow Clones, or any other doppelgangers like that?"

"I... no, Naruto-kun, not beyond the regular Academy illusions," the Hyuga heiress replied.

"...Why do you ask, Naruto?" Kakashi said.

"When I'm in Sage Mode, I can sense chakra—and for a while, I could sense what felt like two Hinatas. One of them is you," the clone said, indicating the heiress herself. "The other was with you guys for a bit until a little while ago. Then it just vanished with the two people it'd been with. I thought it was a set of Shadow Clones disappearing."

"How similar was the chakra?" Neji asked, a moment before Kakashi could formulate the same question.

"I can tell individual chakra signatures apart really well in Sage Mode, guys, and I'm telling you—to me, both chakra signatures were _exactly the same_."

Hinata and Kakashi looked each other in the eye at that pronouncement, Hinata apprehensive and Kakashi frowning in deep thought.

_The same chakra? Exactly the same?_ Kakashi thought.

"Are you sure your chakra-sensing capabilities are accurate enough to say that for sure?" Kakashi asked carefully.

"Positive, sensei. C'mon, don't you believe me? I'm telling you, they had the _exact_ same chakra."

Having no reason to doubt his student, Kakashi considered this newest revelation. Hinata, on the other hand, seemed to have spaced out—she had this strange, faraway look in her eyes.

_My name is Alternate Universe Naruto Uzumaki, and the three of us have been chronologically misplaced due to a colossal space-time ninjutsu fuck-up._

No, don't even think it. The story was wild, silly, couldn't possibly be true.

_Points for bringing that back, though, I have a lot of fond memories from back then. Most of which involve her blushing like a roseberry bush and/or passing out._

Stop, stop, you're thinking about it! Just stop! This is crazy!

_Naruto-kun, be serious!_

But the situation was crazy no matter how you looked at it, and this extra dose of senselessness actually made it look a little more sane somehow.

_...has my father's hair?_

"Naruto-kun," Hinata asked suddenly, as that particular fragment of their conversation occurred to her. "Who was... your father?"

"Huh?" the clone asked, regarding Hinata with a puzzled look. "What kind of time is this to ask a question like that? Although, I suppose if it's you three, I guess I don't mind answering..."

"Wait, what? You know who your father is?" Kakashi asked. "Naruto, how..."

"Isn't this the wrong time for that topic of conversation?" Neji asked testily. "We need to get back and report."

"It has to do with those guys we met back there," Hinata insisted. "One of them, who was claiming to be Naruto, said something like, 'the other me has my father's hair.'"

Kakashi, for a moment, wished he'd seen where Hinata was going with the question in time to stop her from saying that—and the look on Naruto's face wasn't exactly reassuring him on that point, either.

"My father's hair," muttered the clone softly. "Yeah, I suppose I do. Listen—Hinata—ask me again later, okay? I promise I'll tell you who my father is... and some other things I've been meaning to talk to you about... but right now I need to let the real me and Sakura-chan know that it wasn't the real Sasuke they were after. I'll catch up with you all back at camp, yeah?"

And before anyone could say another word, the bruised-and-beaten Shadow Clone had vanished in a poof of smoke.

Hinata shifted uneasily. "Should I... not have said anything, sir?"

"I'm not sure," Kakashi said. "I'm really not sure about anything right now. Let's just get a move on."

**~V~**

Elsewhere in the forest, a flicker of comprehension crossed the other Shadow Clone's face and he said: "Wait, Sakura-chan! Hold up a minute!"

"What is it, Naruto?" Sakura asked, stopping on the next branch she landed on, looking impatient. Naruto, who was ahead of her, had stopped and was looking troubled.

"I just got word from the other clone—Kakashi-sensei says the Sasuke they ran into is some kind of imposter."

"Im-imposter?" Sakura said. "Wait, if there's a fake Sasuke running around, you think maybe what those guys from Cloud say isn't the—"

"It's possible," Naruto said. "But it's weird. The fake is apparently running around with... a double of Hinata and some guy who claimed to be _me_."

"Fakes of you and Hinata, too?" Sakura asked in puzzlement.

"No kidding. Sakura-chan, the real me knows by now, too. We should regroup with Kakashi-sensei back at camp and figure out our next move there. I lost track of where the other Hinata was before I caught up with Kakashi-sensei, and I haven't been able to find her since, nor the two imposters who're with her. I don't like to say this, but... it's out of our hands for now, Sakura-chan."

Sakura could tell just how much the blonde knucklehead was struggling with himself as he said this, and the shift from the impatient demeanor of just moments before was jarring.

Something about the information his clone had relayed to him must have seriously spooked him.

"...Right," Sakura said. "Let's head back, Naruto. What about the team from Cloud, though—?"

"We're too far away to do anything about that one way or the other," the clone said. "I'm going back to the real me now, so take care. I'll see you back at camp."

"Yeah," was all Sakura had a chance to say before the clone popped out of existence, sending its memories and its chakra back to the one who'd created it.

**~V~**

"Alright, we should be far enough away now that not even the Byakugan can catch us," panted the red-haired boy after they materialized for perhaps the fifty-seventh time running. "And I'm... just about out of gas. I seriously need a breather. Hina-chan, are we safe here? See any good campsites nearby?"

The Cadet Branch girl activated her Byakugan once again, and took several long minutes to scan the area around them for several miles. "No threats in the area, but nothing but forest for a good distance. I think here is just about as good as anywhere to take a break."

After lobbing the _Hiraishin_ kunai at random a few times to cause a solid break in the trail the three had left behind—which would hopefully throw their pursuit off well enough to shake it completely—the three had begun running again, stopping every minute or so to throw the marker ahead of them and group-teleport again in another direction. It had been a swift, zig-zaggy escape that none but the most astute sensor-types would have been able to track, and even then they'd only be able to follow the trail if they were hot on the team's heals while they were teleporting around.

After the fact, there would be literally no way to follow Team Seven without meandering around to re-acquire the trail every hundred yards or so. Times like these really drove home to Naruto just how versatile his father's space-time technique really was. Not like that other technique he rarely bothered with anymore, the one-shot wonder known as the Rasengan...

But this was Naruto's limit. Thanks in part to the demon spirit sealed in his body, Naruto's chakra reserves were far and away above the norm, but even so the Flying Thunder God Technique was too taxing to use so many times without a significant break. He doubted even the Fourth himself would be able to keep it up at this pace for much longer.

Any other shinobi might have been secure in the knowledge of their escape, but Naruto had too much respect for his fellow Leaf comrades—whether they were the ones from his own timeline or not—to take them so lightly, even if he did have an advantage that none of them could possibly match. Even Genma's team couldn't use _Hiraishin _as extensively or flexibly at Naruto himself could... could they? Now that he thought on it, could anything be taken for granted as being the same in this timeline?

Damn it all, this time-travel clusterfuck was...

"Hell, I'll say it," grumbled Naruto aloud. "This time-travel clusterfuck is turning out to be a real _drag_..."

"If time-travel really is what this is," Sasuke said. "Which brings up a question I've been wanting to ask for the last fifteen miles or so... what the hell makes you think this is... whatever it was you said it is?"

Naruto let himself plop onto the ground in the grass, glancing around for a good bare patch he could use to illustrate his argument. Finding one, he heaved himself back up and staggered over to it: a small, dry island of dirt and small stones amid the sea of grass. Yeah, that would do just fine.

"Alright, this is complicated shit and it's best not to think too deeply about it once you understand the point of it, because if you really put your mind to it you can give yourself one hell of a headache trying to puzzle this out," Naruto said. Kneeling down next to the dirt patch, he said, "Alright, guys, look here."

As his two comrades—Hinata letting her Byakugan switch off—approached the dirt patch, Naruto slid a finger along the ground, drawing a single straight line in the soil.

"This," said Naruto, "is what time looks like from any living thing's perspective: it moves in exactly one direction, from one place to another in a straight, A-to-B line. You'd agree with that, right?"

"I guess so," Sasuke said, and Hinata nodded in agreement.

"Well, not many people know this, but Dad wasn't the only Hokage who ever researched space-time ninjutsu," Naruto explained. "Tobirama Senju-sama—that is, the Second Hokage—he also researched space-time ninjutsu, and one of the aspects he looked into was the manipulation of time itself... specifically time-travel. It was an aspect of space-time theory that he eventually deemed _kinjutsu _because of the heavy risk pursuing time-travel might pose, both to the user and to the fabric of space-time itself."

"You said something about time-travel theory coming up while you were learning the basics of the Flying Thunder God Technique from the Hokage's elite guard?" Sasuke prompted, to which Naruto gave a nod.

"Yes, but it was primarily brought up as a warning of the consequences that could occur if I experimented too heavily with space-time ninjutsu. In fact, part of the reason _Hiraishin no Jutsu _is kept under wraps is because if it's used improperly, it could be really dangerous to the user. Suppose, for example, I tried to teleport to a marker that was already on my own person? I'd essentially be creating my warp-out point directly on top of my warp-_in_ point, and the worst-case scenario is that I could be physically obliterated right on down to the cellular level. That's actually the key principle I used when I adapted my 'Thunder God Retrieval' technique to create 'Thunder God Obliteration.'"

Hinata shivered a bit at the reminder of her boyfriend's most deadly technique. 'Thunder God Retrieval' was essentially a short-range reverse-summon that allowed him to warp persons or objects bearing his teleportation marker to his own position. He could use the technique to retrieve one of his _Hiraishin _kunai, or to extract one of his comrades from a dangerous predicament, among other things. This variation on the _Hiraishin no Jutsu _was a technique of Naruto's own creation, requiring even more precise control than his father's teleportation technique—it was a hallmark of the team's trust in Naruto that they even allowed him to use in on them at all.

_Thunder God Obliteration is half the reason why the Retrieval technique is so dangerous,_ Hinata thought numbly.

By marking a person or object with a teleportation marker, Naruto could create one or more Shadow Clones and have them all synchronize the Retrieval jutsu to call one person or object through space-time to several different points all at once. The result was a bloody mess that instantly shredded the target, causing different parts of them to materialize in every place they'd been summoned to. It took perfect control, perfect synchronization, and it resulted in instantaneous, complete obliteration... not to mention the most gut-churning show of blood and gore that Hinata had ever witnessed in her life. The one time she had witnessed the technique in use, she had credited her extensive medical training—pointedly, the resulting exposure to injuries both gruesome and gory—as the reason she hadn't expelled the contents of her own gut onto the ground right then and there.

Naruto's Bingo Book alias, "Konoha's Crimson Flash," was a direct reference to that ultimate technique.

"The Obliteration move is one I came up with by taking advantage of one of the dangers of screwing up the manipulation of _space_ when creating and manipulating space-time teleportation points," Naruto said. "Actually, I created the technique by accident in the process of inventing the Retrieval move... and it's the entire reason I took three whole years perfecting my space-time techniques before I actually started putting them to practical use. There were some similar problems when I was working on the Space-Time Barrier Technique, as well. The principle behind it is probably what makes Kakashi-sensei's Mangekyo Sharingan jutsu work the way it does, as well."

"What does all of this have to do with time-travel, though?" Sasuke asked.

"Well, I'm getting to that. Problems with space-time ninjutsu almost always happen when multiple space-time irregularities occur in the same place at the same time, or are used on the same person or object at the same time. When I think about, using _Hiraishin_ to escape whatever space-time technique Madara uses is an extremely risky thing to do, because if I time it badly I might actually wind up obliterating _myself_ in the process of trying to get away."

The color drained from Hinata's face at the prospect, but as she opened her mouth to voice her response to that risk, Naruto stopped her by raising a hand.

"We're getting off-point again. What I'm saying is that any space-time technique consists of two elements: manipulating the fabric of space in order to transcend time, and manipulating the fabric of _time _in order to transcend _space_. It would be accurate to describe _Hiraishin_ _no Jutsu _as a technique that does the former, creating entry and exit points between two places on the same 'layer' of space-time, allowing one to move oneself and others instantaneously between two places in the same instant. In order to move between _different layers_ of space-time, one would have to manipulate _space _in order to transcend _time._ Well," he added, "That's a bit oversimplified, but it's as good an explanation as I could put into words."

Shaking his head, Naruto continued: "According to Tobirama-sama's theory, one with sufficient chakra, control, and mastery of space-time ninjutsu—something neither the Second Lord nor my father came anywhere close to achieving, by the way—could create a rift in space-time of sufficient 'depth' so as to allow the travel between 'layers,' moving either up and down through the flow of 'time' or left and right through the different 'layers' of 'space.'"

"What do you mean by 'layers,' Naruto-kun?" Hinata asked.

"This is where things get sketchy," the red-haired boy said, scratching his whiskers. "Tobirama-sama's theories project three possible 'natures' that would govern exactly what those 'layers' of space-time mean for potential time-travel ninjutsu. The first nature is exactly this—"

Naruto indicated the straight line he'd drawn in the dirt.

"—one solid, immutable timeline. The problem with this idea is that it necessitates some form of 'pre-destination' or 'fate' since... on the two-dimensional 'axis' of space-time, everything that ever is, was, happened, or will happen, exists all at once on an infinitude of different 'layers.' In other words, what we perceive as 'past' or 'present' or 'future' would be completely and totally immovable... including instances of time-travel. There was an unlikely theory in there about the potential consequences of a time-traveler altering the past in such a timeline, but I never really bought into it, and that's beside the point right now."

Next to the straight line, Naruto dug his finger firmly into the soil, creating one single, solitary rivet... a dot in the ground.

"The second nature Tobirama-sama theorized as being a possibility is that 'time' doesn't have any kind of flow at all, and everything happens in sequence on the same exact 'layer' of the time aspect... because there's only ever one layer to begin with. In other words, what's past is gone forever and what's in the future doesn't exist at all until the 'future' becomes the 'present.' In this scenario, 'manipulating time' in any sense would be impossible, because time itself would be a simple illusion of perspective."

Hinata was slightly lost now, and had to take a few seconds to process exactly what these two "natures" meant. Sasuke seemed to understand, but that might have just been his usual impassive mask refusing to betray that he was struggling to keep up. Naruto remained silent for a few seconds, and when he was sure the two hadn't been lost completely, he continued:

"What's happened to us—I believe—may be conclusive proof that the third nature Tobirama-sama hypothesized is in fact the true nature of space-time. This is the most confusing of the three, because it's impossible to accurately portray visually..."

Naruto drew another straight line in the dirt.

"Suppose I couldn't decide one afternoon," he said, stopping halfway through the line with his finger still in the line, "whether I felt like stopping at the dango shack or Ichiraku's for lunch."

"Lunch?" Sasuke echoed, raising an eyebrow just-slightly-so.

"Lunch," confirmed Naruto. "I would hover on indecision and eventually, for example, I would opt for Ichiraku's." Naruto dragged his finger forward again, completing the line. "But at that same point in space-time," he added, returning to the point in the line where he'd paused, "another 'me' on exactly the same layer of space-time would decide that he was in the mood for something sweet, and from that decision time would, for want of a better word, 'break off'—" he drew a second, branching line that started in the middle of the first line and ran off in a separate direction, "and an alternate universe would form, all because I wanted two different things for lunch that day. To me, the Naruto who decided on ramen, this completely escapes my perception because this new universe exists on its own neighboring 'layers' of 'space' and 'time.'"

Hinata and Sasuke looked at each other, and then back and Naruto, and for the first time in his life, Sasuke didn't bother trying to hide the fact that he was lost without a clue.

"What?" he said flatly, unabashedly. "That's crazy. An alternate universe born from a decision over what to eat for lunch? Seriously?"

"Seriously," Naruto said. "And not just that, but even the decision over what flavor of ramen I feel like eating that day, and what variety of _dango _the _other _me felt like eating in that _other _universe. Also, alternate timelines would be born from the choice between stopping to fasten one's sandals or forging on ahead with one's business without taking the time to do so. Alternate realities would be born from random events, like, say..."

He turned a meaningful eye on Hinata.

"...perhaps... one twin son emerging from the womb before another."

Hinata remembered her peculiar lookalike, who claimed to be the heiress of the clan's Main Branch, with her strikingly pristine, seal-free forehead...

"The upshot is that for every little thing that ever happens as a result of anyone or anything—if there's even the slightest chance that something _else _might have occurred instead—a new universe will be born for each and every possible outcome. And then new timelines will spring out of those, and out of those, and even more still out of those. That's why I say it's impossible to illustrate this visually; there are literally so many branching pathways in the flow of time that drawing any lines at all is a lost cause. Time is an infinitely dense, hyper-chaotic _clusterfuck._"

"So you're saying," Sasuke said slowly, "that we've somehow 'transcended' our layer of 'space' and traveled into one of these alternate histories..."

"One in which, apparently," Naruto said lightly, "I was born with different genetic characteristics, Hinata's father was born a few seconds ahead of Neji's, and you, Sasuke, gave in to Orochimaru's temptation in your quest for vengeance and power. And who knows _what _the hell else."

The three sat in silence for several long minutes, during which even Naruto seemed to be processing his own words and thinking about what to do about them. Finally, Sasuke spoke:

"How did this happen?" he asked, almost desperately. "And more importantly, how do we get back to our own timeline?"

Hinata stared at the makeshift diagrams etched into the soil, a blank, uncomprehending look on her face. Something about that look caused something anxious and uncomfortable to stir in the pit of Naruto's stomach.

"I don't know," Naruto admitted at length. "I just don't know."

When camp had been set up using the standard supplies that Hinata carried in her containment scroll, and Sasuke had volunteered for first watch, Naruto still had no answer. Hinata had more trouble getting to sleep that night than she ever had in all the time Naruto had held her in his arms, and for Naruto's part, the only thing that saved him from his own fitful, sleepless night was the pure and simple need to get his energy levels back up.

**~V~**

**Author's Note: **On an unrelated note, _Skyrim _is awesome. That is all.


	4. IV: A Wayward Fate

**Disclaimer:** _Naruto_ is a _Shonen Jump _publication written by Masashi Kishimoto. I am neither _Shonen Jump_ nor Masashi Kishimoto. If that doesn't say it all, I pity you for your lack of perceptive prowess, and strongly advise that you _not _pursue the way of the ninja.

**~V~**

**- Chapter Four -  
>"A Wayward Fate"<strong>

**~V~**

At around the same time that Naruto and Hinata were settling into an uneasy, late-evening sleep (so as to be awake and alert so the team could move under cover of night), a certain small, elderly toad was hopping along a trail on Mount Myoboku. Fukasaku's frame of mind was a combination of irritability and concern at that moment—concern because a summons by the Great Toad Sage was usually a sign that important events were on the way, however distantly; irritability because he was in no mood for the Great Toad Sage's chronic senility on this particular evening, having just come away from one of his more heated (albeit trivial) quarrels with his wife, Shima.

The irritability was the first thing the Great Toad Sage managed to confirm as a valid emotion, naturally.

"...Who are you, again?" the giant, elderly toad wheezed through his blissfully oblivious smile.

Fukasaku's eye twitched. Couldn't they have just _one _conversation without this schtick?

"Ojiji-sama," Fukasaku said evenly, "It's me. Fukasaku. You called me here."

"Oh, yes, yes!" said the Great Honorable Geezer. "I have had another dream that I wish to convey..."

A moment of silence, then:

"What was it, again?"

"Senile old sack of...!" muttered Fukasaku under his breath.

"Ah, yes, that was it," the Great Toad Sage said in his breathy I'm-on-my-deathbed-but-have-lived-a-good-long-life tone of voice... which he'd been speaking in for well over the lifespan of a normal human being, by the by. "Fukasaku, soon a wayward fate will stumble upon our mountain in much the same way as that other young man..."

"Another hapless summoner without a contract, Ojiji-sama?" Fukasaku asked, ignoring the twinge as he remembered his first encounter with the teenage Jiraiya. "Who is this newcomer, and what would you have us do when he gets here?"

"When he arrives, we shall grant him a place next to his own name on our summoning contract," wheezed the old toad, "but not before this toad in snake's clothing meets his other self face-to-face."

"Toad in snake's clothing? Other self?" Fukasaku echoed. "A place next to his own name? Darn it, you senile old... speak plain, please, Ojiji-sama."

"This dream is as plain as ever I've dreamed," the Great Toad Sage said. "When this newcomer arrives, you must introduce him to his other self. I will relay a second dream to the two of them when this has been done..."

"When will this newcomer arrive?" Fukasaku asked.

"Very soon," the Great Toad Sage said with more confidence than he usually injected into his weak-and-wheezy-old-geezer voice.

Fukasaku nodded, thanked the Great Honorable Geezer for this revelation, and then left the eldermost toad's hallowed chamber. As for what the prophecy could possibly, Fukasaku knew better than to speculate. As with the rest of the senile prophet's ramblings, it would all become clear—for better or for worse—in time.

**~V~**

Kakashi Hatake noted several odd aspects about his encounter with the trio he had unhesitatingly reported to the Jonin Commander (currently the highest authority in the village next to Homura and Koharu, as the acting Hokage had departed for the Land of Iron before Kakashi had returned with his report) as being "S-class unknowns." He had been able to tell from the subtle shifts in Shikaku Nara's expression that the Jonin Commander had picked up on the oddities as well.

The most obvious was, of course, the wild story about them being alternate-reality versions of existing people. While the possibility certainly existed that this was a cover for some insidious plot, the story itself was simply so farfetched that the idea of it being used by enemy shinobi as a _cover _became farfetched by association. Yeah, that kind of logic gave even strategists like Shikaku a headache—begging "troublesome" questions like, _But maybe they know that and are using that fact as a way to make the story more believable?_ ...which inevitably caused one to worry and analyze in circles to determine the precise motives of a possible enemy.

Then there was the fact that neither Kakashi's Sharingan (which he'd quickly assessed the situation with before revealing himself, covering it up again before making his appearance) nor Hinata's Byakugan had detected any sign of disguise or deceit, and had confirmed both the Byakugan and Sharingan of the unknown shinobi to be genuine. What's more, the individual introduced to him as an "Alternate Universe Sasuke Uchiha" had displayed that the Sharingan could be activated or deactivated by its user at will—proof that this boy who either was or resembled Sasuke had better physical compatibility with the Uchiha's _dojutsu _than Kakashi himself (who had to cover it with his headband in order to conserve chakra, since he couldn't actually turn it off). Either the user was a _bona fide_ Uchiha by blood, or this was some new advancement in genetic engineering that had made leaps and bounds over all known attempts to enable non-Uchiha to harness the Sharingan. The prospect of both of Konoha's two great ocular _kekkei genkai _existing so freely outside of the Hidden Leaf's control was already a problematic prospect, but the possible secrets within this particular secret added a whole new dimension to be concerned about.

The next point of oddity was a more mundane one: the "Alternate" Naruto had blithely introduced his companions as a "best friend" and a "girlfriend," which in terms of universal shinobi etiquette—reaching across all Hidden Village as a kind of unspoken rule—was a sign of trust, especially when speaking of one's significant other. Revealing the precise nature of one's personal attachments was akin to explaining the exact weaknesses and vulnerabilities in one's own fighting technique: "These are my weak points. I'm trusting you not to strike at them."

Then there was the red-haired boy himself, whose use of _Hiraishin_ had been confirmed via the testimony of an ANBU operative who had prematurely struck at the unknowns and been summarily dispatched by the red-haired boy. (Kakashi had to at least hand it to the rookie in the babboon-patterned mask for not embellishing his own screw-up and for taking his reprimand like a man.) It was alarming and confusing enough that he used the Flying Thunder God Technique, but his appearance alone was cause to pause and consider... and this was something that Shikaku had picked up on during Kakashi's report, as well.

The boy had claimed to be an alternate-timeline version of Naruto, and frankly, Kakashi would have had a harder time believing such a wild story if the red-haired boy had been a flawless replica of the hyperactive blonde Kakashi knew to be the real one. Instead, the boy's appearance was was something that the masked Jonin could imagine Naruto looking like if the blonde's genes had been inverted, or something... and this particular combination of characteristics, namely a face that so closely resembled the Fourth Hokage's and the same fiery-red hair that had so distinguished Kushina Uzumaki and the rest of her clan, was especially telling. If it was some kind of wild deception, whoever was behind it would have to know the details of Naruto's lineage.

Trackers had set off in search of the mysterious shinobi, but despite the admirable skill of those involved, the trail seemed to have gone cold. Kakashi wasn't sure whether or not that was a good thing or a bad thing, but there was one unquestionably _good_ thing about this turn of events...

**~V~**

"A fake?" Karui exclaimed furiously.

"That is a definite possibility that we have to consider," Shikaku Nara said, sitting on the other side of utilitarian table—which would have been the map table if a map were currently on it. The tent was closed off, with the only visible occupants being Shikaku himself and the three ninja from Kumo. "Accompanying this individual were two others, one of which is an almost exact body double of one of our own ninja—the eldest daughter of the Hyuga Clan head, in fact," added Shikaku significantly.

The reference to the "Hyuga Affair" was not lost on any of the Cloud shinobi, but whereas Omoi clicked his tongue and Karui looked insulted, the more reasonable Samui said in a measured voice, "You believe an outside element may be trying to stir up old hostilities between our villages by exploiting the renegade Uchiha."

"It's a possibility we have to consider," Shikaku said again. "I assure you that we will put all efforts into dealing with this matter as swiftly as possible, and will communicate any updates on the situation to Raikage-dono as soon as we have them. It would be best if you could alert Raikage-dono to this latest development, however; this situation has become a lot more troublesome for all parties involved."

"I still don't buy it," Karui said fiercely. "Why should this mean the kill order's suspended? Uchiha—"

"—May or may not have actually abducted Raikage-dono's brother," Shikaku cut in. "And if it so happens that the one who did so is an imposter, rather than the real Sasuke Uchiha, then targeting him specifically may prove to be no more than a red herring. It's probable that Akatsuki is using Uchiha's renegade status to cover their own tracks."

"Based on the intel we've been provided," Samui reminded her team, and then added, "...and on the reactions of Naruto Uzumaki-san and his comrade... it does seem unlikely that Uchiha would have sided with the same organization to which Itachi Uchiha once belonged."

Karui bit back an impatient _tcheh,_ instead reluctantly nodding to acknowledge the point.

"To amend Danzo-sama's earlier concession," Shikaku said, "until further notice, Sasuke Uchiha's allegience is uncertain. As such, until this situation can be clarified, as Jonin Commander I wish to convey this advisory to Raikage-dono. The kill order on Sasuke Uchiha is suspended until this matter has been more thoroughly investigated—however, in the meantime, if it is possible to subdue and capture the Uchiha... or anyone masquerading as him... Kumo has the Hidden Leaf's permission to act as Kumo sees fit, barring execution, unless lethal force is truly the only option. We request only that we be kept informed of further developments, as we will be keeping you informed of the same."

Samui nodded respectfully in acknowledgment. "Thank you for your cooperation, Nara-san. Once we are finished our business in the library, we will depart to rejoin Raikage-sama at the summit."

"Best of fortune," Shikaku said, and then, in a more understanding tone: "For what it's worth, I hope this matter is resolved in time for us to save your sensei."

Karui, Omoi, and Samui all departed the tent, walking with purpose, but now feeling farther away from their sensei than ever. As they left, Karui said in a low, reluctant tone of voice, "I think we should look into that Naruto kid's offer of help after all..."

**~V~**

"Taking one 'troublesome' situation and using it to balance out another 'troublesome' situation," a voice said appreciatively from the back of the tent. Kakashi stepped in through the rear entrance flaps. "Nice."

"If it lessens the chance of a war breaking out between the Leaf and the Cloud, might as well seize the gift horse while it's there," sighed Shikaku, glancing over his shoulder to acknowledge the masked Jonin. "It probably wouldn't have flown if those three didn't happen to include a body-double of the little girl Kumo tried to kidnap the last time it seemed like war might break out. We'll need to update the current Hokage as to the situation ASAP."

"Sai is already taking care of that," Kakashi said.

"One less troublesome errand for me to bother someone else with, then," muttered Shikaku.

**~V~ **

"Jeez, Naruto—I mean, I know you're reckless, but you've never beaten yourself up this badly before," grumbled Sakura irritably as she worked her "magic" on the blonde-haired boy. "Stop fidgeting! Hold still..."

Her right hand glowed a dull, ghostly green as the pinkette did what she could to mend Naruto's injuries—the boy had been black and blue and severely swollen in a number of places, and had a few broken ribs on top of that. He was actually in slightly better shape than he would have been had his wounds been tended to right away, thanks to his regenerative powers.

Naruto winced as he sat up in bed inside one of the medical tents, but it wasn't a wince of pain. He was just seriously regretting his decision to track down Sakura right now. Even Sai, who was about as adept at reading emotions as a two-year-old is at reading a dissertation on metaphysics, could sense his unease—but Sakura was too wrapped up in her work to notice. Hinata stood next to Sai on the opposite side of the bed, biting her lower lip. Naruto had asked if he could talk to her about something once he'd been patched up, and on the inside she was pacing grooves in the floor.

_Does he like me back? I mean, I know he likes Sakura, and maybe this doesn't even have anything to do with that, he probably just wants me to tell him about Sasuke—but he said there was something he'd been wanting to talk to me about! I don't want to get my hopes up, but what else could it be? Ooh, this is nerve-wracking—_

"Hinata-san?" Sai said quietly. "Perhaps you should have Sakura take a look at you, as well."

"H-huh?" Hinata squeaked, snapping out of her trance to regard the androgynous boy.

"You look slightly flushed," Sai clarified. "Perhaps you are coming down with something."

"Eh—d-do I?" Hinata mumbled, and her eyes instinctively flickered to the blonde-haired boy, whose attention had been drawn by Sai's tactless announcement... and for once he didn't seem to be the most oblivious person in the room.

As a matter of fact, she blushed harder when his eyes met hers and they both averted their glances at the same time.

"I-I'm alright, Sai-san," said Hinata.

Sai raised an eyebrow as he noted the brief exchange between Naruto and Hinata, but as he opened his mouth, possibly to press the issue a little further—

"Ah, there you are," said the dark-skinned boy from Kumo. Then he looked the bruised-and-beaten Genin up and down, and then rounded on the dark-skinned woman. "Karui, did you have to beat him up so bad? He's supposed to be some kind of village hero, right? What if one of the ribs you broke accidentally punctured a lung so that he started bleeding internally, and what if he had some kind of physical disorder that prevented internal bleeding from healing right, so that his punctured lung and internal bleeding caused him to die a slow, painful death? And what if his death sparked a war between his village and ours, and that war sparked another war between all five great nations? And what if that war was so brutal that it caused the end of the world as we know it? Or what if, to avoid an embarrassing diplomatic incident, Raikage-sama was forced to disown all three of us as rogue ninja—"

Karui, who was entering the tent beside and behind her male companion, looked as if she were going to fire off some scathing retort—but the first to respond to Omoi's hyper-pessimistic ramblings was the pink-haired medic tending to the injured boy himself.

"What do you mean, _she _beat him up?"

Sakura was looking back and forth between a guilty-looking Naruto and the trio from Cloud.

"Oh, they just, uh... they were sparring with us, too," Naruto invented.

"You only said you were sparring with Sai," Sakura said dryly.

"Well, I was in a hurry at the time!" Naruto said. "I was sparring with Sai, _and_ with these guys, too—right?"

"Right, right!" Karui said a little too enthusiastically. "Just a friendly match between, er, fellow ninja. Nothing to worry about—sorry for going overboard, I, um, got a little worked up."

"It's my own stupid fault, _I _was the one who got worked up!" Naruto insisted. "But it's all good, nothing to worry about..."

Sakura narrowed her eyes at the blonde's rather weak cover story, but was cut off when the third member of the Kumo team—the blonde with the bustline that might be comparable to Tsunade's—gave a quiet cough to get their attention.

"In light of recent—complications," Samui said, "we wanted to discuss the situation regarding the renegade Sasuke Uchiha and our sensei, Killer Bee. If my companions are telling the truth, you, Naruto Uzumaki, offered to provide whatever help you could in finding him."

Naruto, suddenly serious, nodded.

"Are you certain that there's still a chance he may be alive?" Samui prompted.

Naruto glanced uneasily in Hinata's direction, and he seemed to be thinking about something. She met his eye with a questioning glance, and he turned back to Samui.

"I can't say," he admitted. "Depending on how long it's been since he was abducted, it may already be too late. But Akatsuki's goal is to extract the Tailed Beasts from their hosts, so they would need to keep him alive in the meantime."

"You have experience fighting the Akatsuki, do you not?" Samui asked.

"Yeah," replied Naruto. "They've made a few grabs for me in the past, the most recent being... well, you've seen the village, right?" he added sheepishly.

Hinata suddenly understood that questioning glance. _Akatsuki's goal is to extract Tailed Beasts from their hosts?_ she wondered. She didn't have a clue what "Tailed Beasts" could mean, but...

But she definitely remembered the monstrous... _thing _that Naruto had become during his fight with Pain.

"There was also the incident with the Fifth Kazekage," Samui added. Naruto looked mildly surprised, but nodded in confirmation.

Samui shared a brief, silent look with her two teammates, then turned back to Naruto.

"Would you be willing to accompany us, and aide us in our search?" Samui asked.

Naruto blinked, then immediately answered, "Sure, count me in!"

"My name is Samui," said the blonde. "These are my comrades, Omoi—" she indicated the dark-skinned male sucking on a lollipop, "—and Karui." She indicated the dark-skinned female who'd brutalized Naruto earlier that same day, who bowed her head in grudging acceptance.

"We'll be leaving early in the morning," Samui added. "Take what time you need to prepare and rest up. I regret that we cannot wait for you to recover from your injuries—"

"No worries, my recovery time is crazy-fast," Naruto said with a grin and a wink, and Samui nodded in understanding.

"We will make a formal request for your assistance in the meantime—"

"There'll be no need for that," said a voice from behind the Kumo team, and all heads turned to regard the Leaf Jonin with the face-mask and the cock-eyed _hitai-ate._

"I'll take care of the red tape," said Kakashi as he came to a lazy halt next to the Kumo team. "Team Kakashi will be rested and ready for action by four o' clock tomorrow morning, so just take care of everything you need to take care of, get some rest yourselves, and meet us... oh, let's say, at the same place where you and Naruto had your little 'spar.'"

"Four o' clock is earlier than we had intended to depart," Samui said. "Not that we're complaining, mind."

"Four o' clock is fine with me!" Naruto insisted with an enthusiastic pump of his fist. "I'll be up and ready to go. Sakura?"

"I still think you should get more rest," sniffed the medic. "But..." _But this could be our last chance to find Sasuke... _"...time won't stand and wait for the overprotective medic, so we'll be there."

Samui nodded. "We'll send a messenger hawk ahead of us to notify Raikage-sama of the situation," she said. "Thank you for your assistance, Naruto... miss...?"

"Sakura Haruno," the medic replied. "And this here is Sai, and that's our leader, Kakashi Hatake."

"On that note," said Kakashi, his one exposed eye sliding over the rest of the the room to lock stares with the androgynous member of ROOT. "I need to borrow Sai for a minute. To help with that pesky red tape, you understand. Naruto, we'll probably be taking Yamato with us. Other than that, keep this low-key, okay? No need to let word get around that you'll be out of the village, after all."

Sai nodded, smiled at Sakura and Naruto, and walked around the bed to join Kakashi as the two departed the medical tent. Samui quirked an eyebrow at the two as they left, but apparently thought no more of it.

**~V~**

The sun was almost beneath the horizon now, and although he was feeling the aftereffects of minor chakra exhaustion, Naruto—that is, the red-haired one—disentangled himself from his girlfriend and lightly shook her awake.

"Hina-chan, it's your turn to keep watch."

"Hmmm..." she moaned, rolling over and pulling herself up to a sitting position—the Hyuga girl never had been especially good at the whole "light sleeping" thing, especially when she was with Naruto. "Are you still planning to try summoning, Naruto-kun?"

"It has to be done at some point," the red-haired boy said, "and better we figure it out now rather than finding out at in the middle of a life-and-death battle, yeah?"

"I know, but this is dangerous!" Hinata insisted lamely through her just-woke-up muddiness. Naruto chuckled a bit at her expense, and then shrugged.

"Sasuke, you get yourself a few hours of shut-eye," he ordered. The raven-haired boy, who was approaching them to do exactly that, grunted one of his infamous "Hns" as Naruto extracted a small containment scroll from his supply satchel.

Unrolling the scroll, Naruto tapped one of the smaller seals and in a poof of smoke, a larger scroll—this one completely blank—materialized in his right hand. Rolling up the containment scroll and replacing it in his satchel, Naruto proceeded to unravel this larger scroll, spreading it out across the forest floor.

Naruto bit his thumb and then his hands flew through a series of signs. The fingertips of his right hand ignited with small flames of visible chakra, and he placed this hand flat against the parchment.

The moment his hand made contact, a complicated sealing array drew itself into existence on the scroll's surface, beginning at his bleeding right thumb and spreading swiftly across the formerly blank parchment. Naruto withdrew his hand, admiring his handiwork.

"Alright, here's how this is gonna go down," he said, glancing at his two friends. "When I attempt the summoning, there are basically three things that could happen. First, I could wind up summoning the snakes anyway. I doubt it, since I'm probably not on their contract in this timeline, but it's still in the cards and we need to be ready for it. Second, it's possible nothing will happen since I have a contract in the other timeline that I simply won't be able to 'connect' to. Third... and most likely..."

Naruto rolled up the scroll, holding out for his girlfriend to take.

"...I'll probably wind up being teleported to the home of whatever summoning animal I have a natural affinity for," he said. "So if that happens, I want you two to hold down the fort until dawn, and if I'm not back by then, reverse-summon me back here with this scroll. You already have my blood sample in your pack, right, Hina-chan?"

Hinata nodded. "Right."

Naruto smiled. "Odds are if I haven't convinced whatever summoning animals I chance upon to lend me their aide by then, it's not going to happen. You two keep watch and if there's trouble—"

Naruto drew out one of his _Hiraishin_ kunai, handing it to Hinata.

"—throw this, to let me know, and then focus on just trying to get away," he said. "There's honestly no telling whether I'll be within range to warp back here on my own, but I'll at least be able to sense it when the marker alerts me."

Naruto looked both of his teammates in the eye before giving them this next order:

"Listen. Under no circumstances are the two of you to use lethal force unless there is no other choice, do you understand? This situation is complicated enough, and I want the possibility of making allies in this timeline's Hidden Villages to remain on the table."

"Got it," Sasuke said.

"You don't need to worry, Naruto-kun," added Hinata with a small smile. "We'll be gentle."

"I know... and I see what you did there," Naruto sighed, standing up and walking some distance away from his comrades. "One more thing, guys."

Naruto bit his already-healed thumb again and turned to face his friends, hands flicking swiftly through a familiar series of handsigns: Boar, Dog, Bird, Monkey, Ram.

"You guys take care of yourselves," he said before holding out his hand in front of him and initiating the Summoning Technique.

Hinata blinked once, and suddenly her boyfriend was gone.

She let out a nervous sigh and said, "I was afraid of that."

"Naruto can take care of himself," Sasuke said. "You know that."

"Yeah," she admitted. "I know that. Can you blame me for worrying, though?"

"Not really," Sasuke said. "If the situation were reversed, he'd be just as worried as you. Just keep calm and keep to the mission, and trust Naruto to do his part—the same way he trusts you to do yours."

Hinata nodded, and activated her Byakugan. There was nothing for her to do now but keep a solid lookout, and wait.

It was, hands-down, the hardest part of being a ninja.

**~V~**

**Author's Note:** So here we go. Next chapter, the meeting on Mount Myoboku, and the chapter after that, things get moving! ...But before that, I need to stop neglecting _The Whims of Fate _and _Kunoichi Legends_... heh heh... ^_^'


	5. V: The Meeting On Mount Myoboku

**Disclaimer:** _Naruto_ is a _Shonen Jump _publication written by Masashi Kishimoto. I am neither _Shonen Jump_ nor Masashi Kishimoto. If that doesn't say it all, I pity you for your lack of perceptive prowess, and strongly advise that you _not _pursue the way of the ninja.

**~V~**

**- Chapter Five -  
>"The Meeting On Mount Myoboku"<strong>

**~V~**

"Thanks, Sakura-chan," smiled Naruto (the one with blonde hair) as the pink-haired medic finished wrapping the last of his bandages. The swelling was down to tolerable levels now, and with Sakura's help he could even see out his right eye again. It had been almost hopelessly swollen-over mere hours before.

"Just take it easy tonight," Sakura grumbled. "Knowing you, you should be recovered enough by tomorrow, but not if you go breaking another set of ribs because you just couldn't resist doing another two thousand one-armed push-ups. Lay down and rest, you!"

"Who do you think you're talking to, here? Lee?" muttered Naruto. Then with a grin, he said, "But seriously, Sakura-chan, you're a lifesaver."

"Yes, I am," Sakura said amicably, and then, with a small smile in Hinata's direction, she added, "I'll let you two have your little 'talk,' then. Just remember we need to be up and about by four in the morning. Don't be late!"

Hinata blushed and looked at the ground. Naruto scratched at the back of his head, and nodded. Satisfied with that answer, Sakura turned on her heel and exited the tent at a brisk pace.

"So... yeah," Naruto said uneasily after a few moments of timid silence. And then: "...How have you been, Hinata?"

"I-I've been fine, I guess," Hinata said in a very small voice. "It's been busy since the attack. Earlier today I was ordered to search the rubble in the east side for, you know, valuables and other items that could be salvaged or recovered, before they clear that sector for reconstruction." And then, with a small smile: "I... really don't envy Yamato-san at the moment. He's really being run ragged."

Naruto chuckled. "Yeah, he is," he said. "Heck, he might actually think of tomorrow's mission as a much-needed break..."

But at the reminder of exactly _why _they would need Yamato's help, Naruto's good cheer evaporated.

"H-hey, um... Hinata?" Naruto asked hesitantly, looking down at his hands.

"Um... y-yes, Naruto-kun?" Hinata said with a start, and she had to mentally slap herself to attention at that—she hadn't realized it until just then, but in the boy's present state of partial dress, even if he was covered from waste to chest in bandages, her eyes had gotten away from her intentions for a moment.

"I didn't... hurt you, did I?"

"Hurt me?" Hinata echoed, perplexed.

"When you saved me from Pain," Naruto clarified, "and he... hurt you... I lost control. I don't remember what happened after that. Did you... see any of that? Hinata?"

Hinata stepped closer to his bed and said, "Yes, Naruto-kun, I... remember it all." Silence, and then: "Um... what happened to you then, Naruto-kun?"

Naruto was silent, thoughtful, and then he said, "What happened is pretty much the reason Pain destroyed the village, Hinata. That thing you saw—"

His voice faltered, and he remembered everything he'd heard from Sakura about what she'd witnessed in the time after he'd lost control of the Nine-Tails during the battle.

"...that thing," he said, "is the demon spirit that the Fourth Hokage sealed up inside of me when I was a baby. It's the Nine-Tailed Fox. That's how he stopped it, all those years ago. And that's what Akatsuki wants with me."

"Naruto-kun..."

"I was so relieved, you know, when I came to and Katsuya told me I hadn't blown up what was left of the village, or something," Naruto chuckled darkly. "Last time I lost control like that, I... I hurt Sakura-chan. So I wanted to make sure I didn't hurt you, too."

"Naruto-kun, I—"

"You probably don't want anything to do with me now, do you?" Naruto said, still staring at his hands.

"Of course I want something to do with you!" Hinata said loudly, then squeaked, then covered her mouth. Naruto looked up in surprise.

"I love you," Hinata said gently when she moved her hand away from his mouth. "I meant every word of what I said to you that day. No demon fox is going to change that, Naruto-kun... you're the same person now that you've always been. If anything, you've only gotten stronger and smarter and..."

Hinata blushed, and stammered over the next fragment of her confession.

"...a-and more handsome than y-you used to be. I only wish I'd had the courage to tell you all of that before."

Naruto wasn't sure what he was feeling at this pronouncement. He'd had time to think back on everything he'd ever known about Hinata, and he knew now how oblivious to her crush on him he'd been. And now she knew his deepest secret, and she was still able to say she loved him.

"I... Hinata, you don't know what that means to me," he said, "but I'm... not sure I feel the same way about you."

Hinata looked stricken at this, but Naruto quickly raised his hands to placate her.

"That's—that's not how I meant it to come out," he said. "What I mean is... I mean... I've never taken the time to really get to know you before this, so I don't know exactly whether I... how I..."

Naruto grinned sheepishly, scratching at his chin.

"This is hard to put into words," he admitted. "But Hinata, if you're okay with waiting up for me... when all of this is over, I was wondering if you and me... that is, maybe... if you wouldn't mind giving us a chance to find out?"

"O-of course I wouldn't mind, Naruto-kun!" Hinata squeaked out quickly, and then blushed, fidgeted with her fingers, realizing she sounded so _desperate _for such a chance.

Naruto noticed for the first time how cute Hinata was when she got all bashful like that. _Gods, I'm dense. Why didn't I notice this sooner? All those times she would..._

Naruto frowned, realizing something about a previous mission he'd once been on. Before his brain caught up with his memory, Naruto opened his mouth and said, "Oh, hey, Hinata, I just remembered something. You remember that mission from a while back, when we went to find a Bikochu egg?"

"Oh, er—yes, I remember that," Hinata said cautiously, blushing a little harder. _There's no way I'd ever forget how you saw me—_

"Was that you I saw by the—" Naruto began, and then he stopped himself. "Um..."

Hinata was blushing even harder now, eyes glancing left and right.

"S-sorry," Naruto said quickly. "That was stupid of me, bringing _that_ up... and back then, that was stupid of me, too... um... so... yeah, sorry," he added lamely.

"It's... it's fine, I don't mind," whispered Hinata. "Yes, that—that was me."

Naruto looked at Hinata with undisguised wonder, and forgetting the apology he'd just given, he blurted out, "Wow, Hinata, you're beautiful!"

Hinata's blush deepened to an even darker shade of red—

—_saw me naked still remembers wait he thinks I'm he just called me—_

The world faded to black, and Hinata was out like a light before she could even feel the ground rush up to take her.

"H-Hinata!" Naruto exclaimed, leaping up from the bed and ignoring the sharp pain in his side as he scrambled over to where she'd fallen. "Oh man, I'm sorry! That was stupid of me, too, I wasn't thinking! Are you okay, Hinata? Come on, wake up! ...Hinata...?"

"N-Naruto-kun..." whispered the sleeping girl, and Naruto realized she had a blissful smile on her face. "I don't know what to say... it's too sudden... oh, but... don't get me wrong, it's not... that I don't want... it's just..."

Naruto blinked, blushed, chuckled sheepishly to himself, and picked the girl up bridal style, laying her down on the bed.

**~V~**

"Well, it's about _time_," whispered Ino imperiously.

Sakura jumped, looked over her shoulder, and gave her fellow gossip-queen a sour look. "Ino, you pig! Don't sneak up on me like that when I'm trying to eavesdrop!" she hissed.

Ino smirked, and the two of them continued to watch what they could see of the scene inside the tent through the gap in the back flap, as Naruto carefully draped Hinata's sleeping form beneath the blanket. The blonde-haired boy stood there for a moment, watching her sleep, before smiling and pulling up a chair by the side of the bed.

"Naruto, you dummy," Sakura muttered fondly, stepping away from the tent.

Ino followed suit, saying in a low voice, "Well, _that_ was long overdue. Trust that knucklehead to turn it into a comedy routine, though."

"Tell me about it," Sakura laughed. "You know, I always knew it would take a life-or-death situation to beat a confession out of that girl, and Naruto's just too dumb to notice on his own..."

"Hey, he's not dumb!" Ino insisted. "He's actually really smart, when it comes to fighting and stuff. He's just stupid when it comes to _people_. Kind of like a certain other handsome devil I know."

Sakura's humorous smile faded a bit and she said, "Yeah. Yeah, he is."

She remembered the naïve, attention-seeking prankster he'd been at the academy. She remembered the Nine-Tailed Fox that was the cause of it all. She remembered Sasuke's bitter admission of how painful loneliness and isolation were, how being scolded by one's parents didn't even come close.

_Yeah, he is stupid about people,_ she reflected. _I wonder why _that_ is?_ her brain added sarcastically.

Come to think of it... that "handsome devil" Ino was thinking of, Sai, had asked Hinata if she was feeling well before he'd left with Kakashi. That was the same reaction Hinata had gotten from Naruto on several occasions, when she'd displayed obvious signs of being flustered in his presence.

_He's not dumb, he's just stupid when it comes to people._

"Yeah," Sakura said again, and this time the statement sounded revelatory. "Yeah, he is."

**~V~**

The red-haired boy had trained for a long time to hone his physical agility and reflexes to the point where he could react instantaneously. It was a necessary step, after all, if one wished to use _Hiraishin no Jutsu _effectively in any sort of combat situation. Space-time teleportation in a high-tension situation might prove more of a liability than a boon if the user proved incapable of re-orienting themselves and reacting quickly to their new situation, especially if they wished to use the Flying Thunder God Technique offensively.

All of this is simply to say that the Naruto Uzumaki who had recently arrived from an alternate reality was of a much higher skill level than the young man who had once literally tumbled out of a space-time warp into the wilderness of Mount Myoboku. Whereas a teenage Jiraiya had once landed in a heap on that mystical mountain, this master of space-time jutsu knew what to expect and was ready to react the moment it happened.

Half a second after materializing, he realized where he was: about fifty yards above the ground. Whipping out one of his two remaining marker blades, Naruto threw it directly downward at the patch of clear grass beneath him, and when it speared itself in the hardened earth below, he reached out to that same marker and _blinked _to a safe, soft, catlike landing.

It was by far more graceful than Jiraiya's entrance.

"Well, then," Naruto announced. "'Teleported to the home of the animal I have a natural affinity for' it is. Right."

The red-haired boy looked around, and let out a low whistle. "Cool," he murmured as he admired the landscape—the plantlife here was like nothing he'd ever seen anywhere in his travels. The only things he'd seen that came close to being this outlandish were Training Grounds Zero and Forty-Four back in Konoha—the wild nature preserve that had once played host to the second phase of the Chunin Exams, and the wild survival arena that currently did.

Over a mount of stone and leaf to his right, the sound of something very _large_ lumbering around on multiple legs met his ears, and Naruto cautiously turned to face the sound. He ran, quietly, up the mound and peeked around the stalk of some great leafy sprout.

Then, heart soaring with excitement:

"Bunta! Is that you?"

The titanic toad with the colossal pipe clutched between its lips ambled around—_boom, boom, boom—_and fixed the grinning, red-haired boy with a shrewd glare. The toad was just as massive as ever, but on the other side of this rock mound (it so happened) was an almost sheer precipice. Gamabunta, chief of the Summoning Toads, stood at the bottom... which meant that Naruto was standing just about eye-level with him.

"I _am _Gamabunta, Chief Toad of Mount Myoboku," the toad growled imposingly. "Who are _you,_ and how do you know who I am?"

"Aw, don't be like that," sighed the red-haired boy, stepping out and strolling closer to the rounded edge of the cliff so that Gamabunta could see him clearly. "Anyway, it's good to see you, Bunta, even if you don't recognize me. Actually, this is perfect! Is there any chance you guys could get me in touch with Jiraiya-sama? If there's any ninja alive who knows enough about the Fourth Hokage to know I'm telling the truth, it's him. How is that old pervert, by the way?"

Gamabunta's expression soured, or cringed, or something. Either way, it seemed like Naruto had struck a sore spot. The red haired boy quirked his head to one side.

"Eh... did I say something wrong, Chief?" he asked slowly.

"We can't get you in touch with Jiraiya," Gamabunta said gruffly. "But there is someone you need to see."

The giant toad inhaled a deep breath, and the suction almost pulled Naruto from his feet—

"KASHIRA! HE'S HERE!"

The suction had almost pulled Naruto off his feet, but the blast of air that accompanied this deafening shout _did _blow Naruto off his feet. The red-haired boy flew backward several feet—and then as Gamabunta watched, he blinked out of sight in a flash of red light.

The Chief Toad blinked, then rolled his eyes to and fro. _Where'd that scamp get to...?_

"Uh, Chief, could you say that again a little louder? Someone back in Leaf Village might not have heard you."

Bunta's eyes snapped back to the mound on which the red-haired stranger had been standing—and there he was again, strolling casually back up from the same direction as before. This time he was twirling an oddly-shaped kunai knife on one finger, one with a familiar three-pronged blade and a series of odd symbols painted onto the hilt.

_No, that's impossible... that's one of the Fourth Hokage's..._

"_Hiraishin no Jutsu,_" the red-haired boy said in answer to the suspicious look in Bunta's eye, in a bored sort of voice. "Yeah, I've mastered the Fourth Hokage's space-time techniques, and then some. I need to get in touch with his old teacher, it's important. Can you be a pal, Bunta, and pass the word along?"

Gamabunta looked... thoughtful? It was hard to tell when it came to giant toads, but it was another, quieter voice that spoke first:

"Jiraiya-boy is no longer with us, I'm afraid."

The red-haired boy stopped twirling the _Hiraishin_ kunai, letting it dangle uselessly from his index finger. Turning his head to regard the newcomer with a frown, he saw a small toad standing on two legs atop one of the nearby sprout's gargantuan leaves. This toad was about the height of Naruto's forearm, wrinkled with age and clad in a black cloak, its beard and bushy eyebrows both grayed to pure whiteness. Its expression was both sad and determined.

"What exactly do you mean when you say Pervy Sage isn't 'with you,' old man?" Naruto asked.

Fukasaku stared back at the red-haired boy, his eyes intense. He pondered that nickname—'Pervy Sage'—and his eyes lingered on the red-haired boys cheeks... which bore familiar, whisker-like markings.

_A place next to his own name... his "other self..."_

"Young man," said the elder toad, "what is your name, and why have you come to our mountain?"

The red-haired boy twirled the marker blade once on his finger, tossed it into the air, caught it, and returned it to its sheath on his hip.

"Name's Naruto Uzumaki," he said easily. "As for why I'm here, long story short, I'm an alternate-universe duplicate of someone else who exists in this reality, and I wanted to see what would happen if I tried to summon the snakes I made a contract with back home. So today I learned something interesting: I have a natural affinity for _you guys_. Always did like the toads, actually. Jiraiya-sama's a bit of an ass, but you guys are alright."

Fukasaku's eyes widened a bit, as the truth of the boy's statement filled in the blanks left by the Great Toad Sage's prophecy. Gamabunta, however, laughed a long, booming laugh.

"That's a good one, runt! Naruto, from some kind of parallel universe! Haven't heard a summoner pull something _that_ wild in... well, forever!"

Waiting for the giant toad's hearty guffaws to subside to a dull roar (Naruto had plugged his ears with his fingers, and was regarding the Chief Toad with a withering look), Fukasaku said calmly: "He's telling the truth."

Gamabunta stopped laughing for a moment, processing that statement, and then laughed all the louder.

Fukasaku heaved a long-suffering sigh and waited for the laughter to die down.

"...Wait, you're serious, Kashira?" the Chief said disbelievingly, in the face of the old sage's stern stare.

"Yes, Bunta, I am serious, now pipe down. You'll blow the poor lad's ears out."

For Naruto's hands were clapped over his ears and the boy's eye was twitching rather dangerously. But at that, he dropped his hands and said, "Wait, what?"

"I believe you," Fukasaku said simply.

"Just like that?" Naruto said weakly. "What, you guys get tourists from the Ninth Dimension on a regular basis, or something?"

"Heh heh," chuckled the old toad. "Hardly. Your coming was foretold by the Great Toad Sage, Naruto-boy."

Naruto blinked, frowned, and said, "Foretold?"

"Quite!" confirmed Fukasaku. "Which means there's someone we need to introduce you to..."

**~V~**

Hinata moaned lightly as she floated back to consciousness, and opened her eyes... through the haze, she saw blue eyes, blonde hair, and a sheepish, relieved smile.

"Naruto-kun...?" she murmured. But suddenly, he was gone.

Hinata pushed herself up into a sitting position, looking around for the blonde boy.

_Was I dreaming?_ she wondered.

Weird. He had seemed so real, she would have sworn on her life he was actually there. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she looked around, trying to remember what had—oh.

Hinata blushed. Well, it had been a little less idyllic than she'd imagined, but... she and Naruto...

_When this is all over, when Naruto-kun is finally safe from Akatsuki..._

Hinata pushed herself off of the bed, standing up and taking a deep breath. She stretched her arms, looking around the deserted tent, and then set out for her clan's temporary camp. It was getting late, she realized, and it wouldn't do to miss her curfew.

She walked back to the Main Household's tents with a smile on her face and a new spring in her step.

**~V~**

A moment ago, Hinata was stirring on the bed and the blonde-haired boy was leaning over to check on her. He wasn't sure what he was going to say—an apology for being so tactless, maybe? Moot point, now.

This particular moment, the moment after that, he was standing in the home of Fukasaku and Shima, leaning over a bowl of home-cooked worm soup with a look of concern on his face.

"What the _hell?_" he exclaimed, springing back from the table with a look of disgust.

"Oh, you hurt this poor old woman's heart, Naruto-chan," chided the small, purple toad on the other side of the table. "You could at least give it chance..."

"Wha—?" sputtered the blonde boy. He looked around the room, seeing Fukasaku standing by the door with an unfamiliar teenage boy with red hair, who looked sheepish. "Gramps? Grandma-toad? What—?"

"We've called you here for a very important reason, Naruto-boy," Fukasaku said. "The Great Toad Sage has a prophecy he wishes to convey to you... but first—"

With a wry grin, Fukasaku lifted his miniature cane and jabbed the point in the red-haired boy's direction.

"—Naruto-boy, meet Naruto-boy!"

The red-haired boy scratched at the whisker-marks which adorned his left cheek (there were similar marks on the other), raised his other hand in greeting, and said, "Uh, yo. How's it hangin', Blondie?"

Naruto recoiled, pointed an accusing finger, and yelled, "It's you! The guy who was with that other Hinata and... with Sasuke! The one who was claiming to be _me_!"

The red-haired boy winced, clapped his hands over his ears, and muttered something about his poor, aching eardrums.

**~V~**

**Author's Note:** So, here they are—Naruto and Naruto. Two boys, one bowl of worms. Will they get along? Will the Number-One Knucklehead Ninja even believe his alternate-universe counterpart's wild story? And just what sort of prophecy does the Great Toad Sage wish to convey to the two Jinchuriki of the Nine-Tailed Demon Foxes?


	6. VI: Nine Plus Nine

**Disclaimer:** _Naruto_ is a _Shonen Jump _publication written by Masashi Kishimoto. I am neither _Shonen Jump_ nor Masashi Kishimoto. If that doesn't say it all, I pity you for your lack of perceptive prowess, and strongly advise that you _not _pursue the way of the ninja.

**~V~**

**- Chapter Six -  
>"Nine Plus Nine"<strong>

**~V~**

"So let me get this straight," growled the blonde-haired boy as he walked along the trail to the Great Toad Sage's chamber. "You expect me to believe that you're some kind of 'other me' from some kind of 'other Konoha' and that the Hinata and Sasuke you were seen with are also from some kind of different dimension. That about right?"

The red-haired boy strolled next to him. Whereas the blonde had his arms folded over his chest and an almost comically suspicious expression on his face, the red-haired boy strolled easily along with his hands tucked comfortably in his pockets. Fukasaku and Shima hopped along ahead of them, and at this, the former glanced over his shoulder and said, "It's the truth, Naruto-boy, as hard as it may be to believe."

"It _is_ pretty fucked-up, though," the red-haired boy said with an uncaring shrug. "Two Naruto Uzumakis in one universe. The sheer force of our combined awesomeness might be a danger to the world all by itself."

Naruto unfolded his arms, glaring as his counterpart, and said, "How the hell does that even _work?_"

"Branching timelines. A whole lot of complex metaphysical mayhem. You familiar with space-time theory?"

"Meta-whatsitis? Space-time theory?" the blonde echoed cluelessly.

The red-haired boy sighed, scratched his head, and said, "You know what, let's not even go there. All that really matters is that there are a whole bunch of different dimensions and a whole bunch of different Hidden Leaf Villages. And a whole bunch of different you and me. Maybe even one that went psycho and tried to destroy the world! ...Maybe even one that _did_."

The red-haired boy said this with an evil, menacing grin, and the blonde-haired boy first frowned impetuously, then seemed to sober up as he pondered the implications.

"Yeah, I guess I see what you're sayin'," he said seriously. "It's still really weird to think about."

"That it is, Blondie, that it is," the redhead said mildly. "In our cases, you and I seem to have been born with different genetic characteristics and some pretty distinct psychological profiles—"

"You've lost me again," said Naruto bluntly.

"I mean you have Dad's hair and Mom's face, but I have Dad's face and Mom's hair. And we act like completely different people."

The blonde-haired Naruto nodded in understanding. The other Naruto determined then and there that long, complicated technical terms were probably the wrong way to explain things to this guy.

"Wait, hang on!" the blonde exclaimed a second later, turning excitedly to look the redhead square in the face. "You said I have... Mom's face?"

"Yeah," said the redhead with a shrug. "What, you didn't notice?"

The blonde winced, and said, "I never knew my mom."

The redhead slowly withdrew his hands from his pockets. "Whoa, dude, sorry. That was insensitive. Neither did I—but, really? You've never even seen a picture?"

The blonde shook his head dejectedly, and the redhead scowled.

"Well, that sucks," he said. "Let's do something about that."

Reaching into his supply pack, the red-haired boy withdrew a small, tightly-bound scroll, which he untied and then unrolled. The scroll, Naruto observed, was covered in weird symbols—it reminded Naruto of the big scroll that Tenten carried around, in which she stored her many, many weapons. The red-haired boy tapped the very first symbol at the top of the very first column, and in a gentle poof of smoke, a bedroom-sized, framed photograph materialized.

"I wanted to keep this in my bedroom, but if some foreign ninja came snooping around, it'd be a problem if they found out the Fourth was my father," muttered the redhead darkly as his eyes hovered on the photograph. "So I just keep it with me. Only my own chakra can open the seals on this scroll, so I don't have to worry about anyone seeing it who shouldn't."

The redhead held out the picture frame, and Naruto, hand trembling slightly, took it, turned it over, and could only gape like an awestruck fool. Absently, the redhead rolled up and rebound the storage scroll, slipping it back into his satchel.

There, on the left, was a face that Naruto recognized—his father, Minato Namikaze, the Fourth Hokage of _Konohagakure no Sato_. Instead of the shinobi flak jacket and billowing white Hokage cloak he'd worn when Naruto had met him within his own subconscious days before, he was clad in simpler, more casual clothing. His expression was happy, content, as he stood next to a woman in a chair, with red hair and a smiling face, her hand resting gently on her engorged womb.

The redhead watched in mild wonderment as the blonde's lip trembled just a little and his eyes teared up just a bit. He turned his head forward, chuckled sadly, and said, "You know, if you want, you can keep that."

The blonde's head snapped up. "Huh? But this is—do you have any other—?"

"Naw, that's the only picture I have," said the redhead unconcernedly. Then he tapped the skin just beneath his left eye and said, "but I can use this eye technique I learned a few years ago to read my own mind and look back on my memories, so if I ever want to look at it again, it's in here somewhere. I'll just have to dig it out. So I don't really need the picture, you keep it."

Naruto's smile was a grateful one. He blinked back a tear before he said, "Th... thanks, um... me?"

The redhead chuckled. "Call me Minato. That's Dad's name. I borrowed it once before, so I don't think he'll mind if I borrow it again."

"Minato, then... thanks, man. I appreciate this."

"It's cool," said Minato. "Anyway, I think we're here."

And so they were: the two turned 'round a bend in the mountain path and found themselves standing before a large cave entrance, pillars built into the left and right sides. Following the lead of Fukasaku and Shima, Naruto and Naruto entered the chamber, and found themselves in the presence of one very large, very wrinkly old toad.

"Heya, Super-Size Sage!" the blonde greeted loudly, with a very informal wave of his hand.

The red-haired boy, alias Minato, snorted and mouthed, _Super-Size Sage?_

The Great Toad Sage remained still, eyes closed and a blissful smile adorning his face, and then he twitched—or shook, it looked like, but mostly because of his sheer size—and his eyes opened ever-so-slightly. After several sleepy mumbled from the old toad, Fukasaku cleared his throat.

"Ojiji-sama, the newcomer you spoke of has arrived," said the diminutive sage.

"Eh?" grunted the Great Honorable Geezer with a start. "Oh, yes, yes! Let me get a look at you..."

The Great Toad Sage leaned forward slightly, fixing the blonde with a searching gaze.

"...Who are you, again?"

"C'mon, Super-Size, it's me! Naruto Uzumaki! At least try to remember my name!" whined the blonde.

"Ah... yes, yes! That's right!"

Next to Naruto, the redhead leaned over and whispered, "This senile sack of wrinkles is our great and powerful prophet-dude?"

"Yep," Naruto replied by way of annoyed mutter.

Minato sighed, straightened up, and said, "Er—Great Toad Sage, sir. I'm told you have an important prophecy for the two of us?"

"Indeed I have," replied the Sage wheezingly. "...Er... who are _you_, again?"

"This is the newcomer whose arrival you foretold, Ojiji-sama," said Fukasaku in a long-suffering voice. "The _other _Naruto."

"Right, right! I've been waiting for you to arrive, child! Welcome to our humble mountain."

Minato bowed his head slightly and said, "Honored to be here, sir."

"I saw your coming in my dreams, young one," wheezed the old sage. "You have quite a battle ahead of you, if you wish to find a way back to your own village."

Minato stepped forward half a step before he could stop himself. "You know how I can get my team home?" he asked, almost demanded.

"Hm... I cannot see clearly enough to say that I do," murmured the Sage. "I only know of the events you will face as you move forward, and of the path that stretches out before the feet of your other self. You will walk this path beside him, for a time. I see no further beyond the now than that."

The blonde piped up, "You mean he's going to be working with me to find a way back to his own world?"

"That, and to find a way to save this one," replied the Sage. "Both worlds face the same enemy, and that enemy now has three marks to hunt instead of two."

The blonde crinkled his brow, but the redhead immediately said, "Because there are two Nine-Tails Jinchuriki now."

Naruto looked over to the redhead in surprise, then realized he shouldn't have. Of _course _the other him was a Jinchuriki, too! Duh. But the idea of there being _two _Nine-Tailed Foxes now...

The redhead grimaced, turned to Naruto, and said, "There's only one other Jinchuriki besides us? What happened to all the others?"

"I didn't know there was only one left," Naruto said, crossing his arms in an almost exaggerated stance of serious thought. "I mean, I know they managed to get Gaara's _Biju _a while back—"

Minato looked striken. "Gaara's... dead?"

"Huh? Oh, no, no! We all thought he was at first, and I guess he was, but old lady Chiyo used some special jutsu to..." Naruto faltered, then continued in more sober tones, "Chiyo-baasama, um, gave her own life to save Gaara's. So he's still alive, he just doesn't have a Tailed Beast inside him anymore."

Minato sighed, an action one part forlorn and two parts relieved. "Well," he said, "that's something to be happy about. How about the others? Fu, from Taki? Or Yugito and Bee from Kumo? Utakata from Kiri?"

"I... dunno," said Naruto. Then: "Wait, hang on! A team from Kumo showed up today, saying that Sasuke joined..."

Naruto trailed off, and Minato clicked his tongue.

"We'll talk about the situation in more detail when we're done in here," he sighed. Looking up at the oversized toad, he said: "Great Toad Sage, sir, sorry for going off on a tangent just now. Please, continue."

"Gladly, child," said the Sage pleasantly. "On the path ahead of you, the two of you will meet... an octopus."

"An octopus?" echoed Naruto.

"The vision is cloudy, but I am sure they are octopus tentacles," confirmed the Sage.

"He probably means Bee," said Minato. When Naruto raised an eyebrow in response, the redhead added: "Killer Bee is the Raikage's brother, and the Eight-Tails Jinchuriki. He has perfect control of the Eight-Tails, he can even take the shape of it as if he were actually becoming the Eight-Tailed Beast completely. It's a freaky-looking thing, like a giant ox with octopus tentacles."

"Ah, I get it!" said Naruto, smacking a fist into the palm of his hand.

"Anything else, sir?" Minato asked politely, turning back to the Great Toad Sage once more.

"Yes, there is one more thing," murmured the elderly prophet. "Two young men with great power in their eyes, each the mirror image of the other—one with the soul of a crow and the other the cry of a hawk..."

"Sasuke?" asked Minato, and next to him, the blonde boy visibly tensed.

"These two young men will battle each other for their very lives," said the Great Toad Sage. "I cannot see the outcome. Only that each loathes what the other has become with every fiber of his being."

Minato frowned. Naruto turned to him and said, "Uh, what's he saying, Other Me?"

"He's probably saying that the Sasuke on my team is going to fight the Sasuke from this world," murmured the redhead. "I get the 'soul of a crow' part, I think—Itachi used crows a lot in his illusions, and my Sasuke implanted Itachi's eyes to awaken his Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan. I don't know what the hell the 'cry of a hawk' part means, though."

The redhead bowed deeply and said, "Thank you for your insight, sir. We will keep your words in mind as we move forward."

Fukasaku cackled. "The new guy sure is polite for a 'Naruto.'" Then: "Well, now that the first bit's out of the way..."

The Great Toad Sage smiled, turned to his lower right, and said, "Gamatora... I have foreseen the transfer to Naruto, as well. Give him the Fourth's key."

Something small and spherical stirred beneath the great toad's gaze, and the two boys rolled their eyes to see what it was... and it was a toad. Naturally.

"If you say so, Elder!" croaked Gamatora, and instantly its torso... stretched? No, rather it slid apart to reveal a scroll that seemed to be _built in _to its stomach. The scroll unraveled before their eyes, easily three times as tall as Gamatora had been before revealing it. The parchment bore a complex _fuinjutsu _array that took Minato's breath away.

The redhead stepped forward and ran his fingers lightly over the air a mere inch away from the scroll. "This is...?"

"This is the key to opening and closing the Fourth Hokage's seal," Gamatora said. "With this, you could completely release the Nine-Tails if you wanted to."

"No wonder I couldn't figure out a decent key on my own!" murmured the red-haired boy as he examined the markings. "This key is more advanced than anything I've ever seen, it'd take years and years of trial and error to match it."

"You a practitioner of the sealing arts, boy?" Fukasaku asked, sounding impressed.

"Yeah, I got into it a little while before I graduated from the Academy," Minato murmured. "At first I was just looking for a way to counter Hina-chan's curse seal, but I took a liking to _fuinjutsu _in general after a while. It's really handy if you know how and when to use it."

The blonde-haired boy just stared at the key-shaped sealing array being displayed before him, looking thoughtful.

"Put your hand on that square," Gamatora instructed, looking to the blonde. "This's also your ticket to perfecting 'that' jutsu..."

Naruto's expression soured. He placed a hand over his belly, looking down at the place where the Nine-Tailed Fox's seal had been affixed.

"Nervous, Naruto?" Gamatora chuckled. "I don't blame you."

"Why's that?" Fukasaku asked. It was the red-haired boy who spoke first.

"Because just being able to access the _Biju_'s chakra isn't enough," Minato said. "The trick is to siphon off its chakra without letting in any of its consciousness. The problem is, whenever you try to take its power, its mind comes right along with it. The more power you use, the more of that malevolence seeps through and starts messing with your own head."

"You sound like you have a lot of experience wielding the Nine-Tailed Fox's power," Gamatora said with a nod. The red-haired boy shrugged.

"I trained for a while to build up my resistance to it," Minato said. "Sasuke's Sharingan lets him exert a level of influence over the furball, so he was always able to push it back before things got nasty. I still can't keep my head on straight if I go past the third tail, though. I don't like to use it, but at the same time, sometimes I didn't really have much choice in the matter. Better to use it than to let it fall into the wrong hands, right?"

"I can't even get _that _far," said Naruto nervously. "I don't think it's a good idea to chance it. During the fight with Pain, I almost—"

"Look at it this way, Blondie," reasoned Minato. "If you just take the key now, you'll have it on hand for when you decide whether or not you want to use it. If you don't take it now, you may not have a chance later. I say, leave yourself the option." He put his hands in his pockets, casting a rueful look up at the high chamber ceiling as he added, "You may not like the idea—trust me, I've been there—but you may not be able to beat the bad guys without it. If we actually do meet up with Bee, he may be able to help you take control of it. Like I said, he has perfect control of the Eight-Tails, so he knows just about as much about wielding a _Biju_'s powers as anyone you'll ever find."

"...Yeah, alright," Naruto said. And he stepped forward, placing his hand in the small, black square imprinted just above the sealing array. His fingers ignited with a glow of chakra as he did, and he felt a gentle, tingling sensation shoot down his arm from where his hand touched the paper.

"The contract is signed," Naruto said at last. "I'm all yours!"

The moment Naruto removed his hand, the key-scroll rolled itself back up—almost snapped itself shut, even—and then Gamatora slid back to his regular height, which was roughly as tall as a man's forearm is long.

"Which leaves one more contract to be signed," Fukasaku said. "But first, Gamatora has to store himself with you."

"Eh?" the blonde boy said. "How's that work?"

"Open your mouth as wide as you can," Fukasaku instructed.

"Er... okay," Naruto agreed, and opened his mouth as wide as he could—

"Here goes nothin'," Gamatora muttered, hopping forward several steps, and then—

"_HURRRK—!"_

Minato's eyes bugged out as the toad sprang into the air and right into Naruto's mouth. Wriggling and wriggling, the toad's legs flailed uselessly as it tried to force itself further down Naruto's gullet.

"Hey! Open wider!" came the muffled command of Gamatora through Naruto's bulging cheeks. "You gonna let me store myself in you, or what?"

The redhead stepped forward, cracking his knuckles, and said, "Down the hatch, Blondie!"

Then he gave the toad's backside a hearty smack. With a very wet-sounding _shoop!_ it popped into Naruto's throat, and the blonde-haired boy gasped, clutching at his neck and looking rather green.

"There we go!" cheered Minato. Naruto turned a withering glare on his other self, but before he had a chance to voice his displeasure, he collapsed onto his hands and knees, coughing and retching.

Kneeling down and patting his counterpart on the back, the red-haired boy turned to Fukasaku and said, "Now about that other contract you mentioned...?"

**~V~**

Some time later, when Naruto had finally overcome his nausea, the two Jinchuriki found themselves sitting cross-legged on the grass outside the Great Toad Sage's chamber. The light filtering out from the entrance shone in contrast to the darkening sky—the flaming orange of sunset was now almost a distant memory, having faded almost completely to a mystical purple and then to the black of night. Stars twinkled overhead, and a waxing moon peeked out from behind a thin wisp of clouds.

"I'm not sure how I feel about signing another summoning contract, to be honest," murmured Minato, glancing sidelong at Fukasaku. "I mean, I've been relying on the snakes for ages, and sure, they're not always pleasant conversationalists... but I feel like I'm turning my back on old friends, or something."

"Understandable," sniffed Fukasaku. On the one hand, the toads and snakes never had gotten along—but on the other, any summoned animal worth its salt valued the respect and loyalty of its summoner. "But you must remember that the snakes in this world are no more your loyal allies than the 'Sasuke' of this world is the friend you know from your own."

"I know," said Minato grudgingly. Just then, a hound-sized toad hopped over a nearby ridge, opened its mouth, and uncoiled a long tongue: from its mouth, it presented to them a large scroll, only slightly smaller in size than the one Naruto had once stolen from the Hokage's home all those years ago.

"You said you'd signed a contract with _snakes?_" Naruto said incredulously. "As in, Orochimaru's snakes?"

"Hey, Blondie, they are _not _'Orochimaru's snakes!'" the redhead snapped, seeming insulted. "It's not their fault that one of their most frequent summoners happens to be an asshole! For your information, I learned the Summoning Technique from Anko, who hates Orochimaru's guts."

"Psycho snake lady?" Naruto asked.

The redhead smiled, pointed a finger at the blonde, and said, "That's the one!"

Naruto blinked in disbelief. "Why would _that_ crazy woman teach you _anything?_"

"I don't know what she is to _you_, but to me she's like a sister," Minato said. "...That sadistic, trashy, yet weirdly nurturing sister who drives you batshit insane, but is still indescribably precious to you all the same."

"...Huh," said Naruto. "Weird."

Minato shrugged, then turned back to Fukasaku. "Anyway, don't get me wrong. I appreciate it, and I've always had a soft spot for you guys, anyway. So I'm grateful for whatever help you're willing to give me while I'm in this world."

"Aye, lad, it's our pleasure," Fukasaku said. "Now, I take it you know the how this works?"

Minato took the scroll in hand, placed it on the ground, and unraveled it. He saw a number of names signed one after the other in dark red, and beneath each, a set of five bloody fingerprint.

"Yep," Minato said merrily, and then bit down on his thumb with his canines. Bloodying his index finger, he scribbled his true name in the next open space: _Naruto Uzumaki._ The three most recent names behind it were those of Naruto, the Fourth Hokage, and Jiraiya. Other names he didn't recognize at all ran off into the long-lost history of this scroll's former contract-holders, vanishing beneath the parchment still wrapped around itself.

Once this was done, Minato bloodied all five of the fingers on his right hand and pressed them firmly down on the scroll in the space beneath his name, sealing the deal.

"And there it is," Fukasaku said cordially. "We welcome you, Naruto Uzumaki, and recognize you as a worthy summoner of the Mount Myoboku toads."

"Honored to be here, Fukasaku-sama," replied Minato politely. The corner of Fukasaku's mouth twitched upward in a wry grin.

"You're certainly more respectful than this other brat, lad," he snickered. Naruto twisted a finger in one of his ears, pretending to ignore the sage.

"Now we need to discuss what we're going to do next," Minato said to Naruto, rolling up the scroll and holding it out for the hound-sized toad to retrieve. When the toad took the scroll back into its mouth, it hopped away in the direction it had come.

"Tomorrow morning, me and the rest of Team Kakashi are going with those ninja from Kumo to try and help them track down Octo-Dude," Naruto said. "They said..." He sighed, looked down, and went on: "...They said Sasuke joined Akatsuki and kidnapped him."

Minato remembered his girlfriend saying something about seeing Bee's students with the ANBU pursuit force that was after them...

"If a rogue ninja from Konoha attacked the brother of the Raikage, the Leaf brass probably wants to do anything and everything to make sure it doesn't stir up aggression between villages," the redhead reasoned. Naruto nodded his head.

"Yeah, yeah! At first, Danzo—the guy who's taking Baa-chan's place as Hokage—" Naruto added with a sour look, "—he gave permission for Sasuke to be executed as a rogue ninja, but then you guys showed up, so the order's being put off 'cause they think it might've been a fake Sasuke who..."

The blonde trailed off and lapsed into silence for a bit. Minato waited patiently for him to continue. Finally:

"...It wasn't a fake Sasuke who did it, was it?" Naruto said in a small voice. Minato shook his head, and Naruto looked crestfallen.

"Blondie," the redhead said carefully, "I heard from your Hinata earlier that the Sasuke of this world ran off to join Orochimaru. Am I right?"

"Yeah," said Naruto quietly. "Wait, hang on—what was Hinata doing with you guys, anyway? My Hinata, that is, not yours?"

"I don't know how she found us," Minato said. "Maybe just coincidence, but she confronted us and tried to talk Sasuke into turning himself in. Said stuff like 'it's not too late' and that you guys were all still his friends and comrades."

"She did that... alone?" Naruto said, alarmed.

"Yeah, she was alone for a bit. Kakashi-sensei didn't show up until later."

Naruto let out an anxious breath and said in a low voice, "Thank God it wasn't _our _Sasuke..."

The red-haired boy quirked his head to one side, frowning. "Just how dangerous is your world's Sasuke Uchiha?"

Naruto, with a pained expression, looked his counterpart square in the eye and said, "The last time I saw him, he tried to kill me to prove a point. I don't want to _think _about what would happen to Hinata if she tried to talk him out of whatever he's doing."

Minato massaged the bridge of his nose, considering that statement, and then said, "Blondie, listen—I need to know what's going on in this timeline, both with Sasuke and the Akatsuki. Can you tell me everything that's happened so far? Starting from the beginning?"

Naruto looked back at the redhead, leaned back on his arms, and said, "Yeah, sure..."

**~V~**

**Author's Note: **I decided on the alias of "Minato" a while ago; it's a reference to the red-haired Naruto's backstory, which will come up at some point during the _Possibilities of Time_ series. I only hope it's not too confusing to be using the name of the Fourth Hokage. Even if it is, though, you have to admit it's a step up from constantly clarifying which hair color a particular "Naruto" has, right?


End file.
